


Theory

by Guede



Series: Theory [2]
Category: Hornblower (TV), King Arthur (2004)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Spies & Secret Agents, Biting, Blow Jobs, Dating, Derogatory Language, F/M, Fight Sex, Flirting, Gossip, Groping, Investigations, Jealousy, M/M, Moving In Together, Office Sex, Open Relationships, Philosophy, Polyamory, Polyamory Negotiations, Rough Sex, Secrets
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-19
Updated: 2020-12-16
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:20:23
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 40,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28100814
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Guede/pseuds/Guede
Summary: Dr. Arthur Pendragon, college professor and resident faculty dreamboat, is about to have his life turned upside-down.
Relationships: Arthur Castus/Guinevere, Arthur Castus/Guinevere/Lancelot, Arthur Castus/Lancelot, Gawain/Tristan (King Arthur 2004), Guinevere/Lancelot (King Arthur 2004)
Series: Theory [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2058675
Kudos: 5





	1. Prologue: School of Hard Knocks

**Author's Note:**

> Originally written and posted to LiveJournal in 2005.

“Because you’re a sloppy bastard that doesn’t know his subpoena from his snatch!” Running and pivoting that fast on three-inch heels wasn’t precisely a good idea, but Guinevere was damned if she was letting him out the door. She got in just before him and flipped about to slam the door closed with her hip. Then she tilted her face up towards his irked one and smiled. “Lancelot. Just admit it. You can’t possibly handle this one yourself.”

He started to answer, but cut himself off. Instead, he rocked back on his heels so he could rest his elbows against the door, on either side of her head. “Oh. Really,” he murmured, voice dropping to a hissing threat. “Well, you’re a cunt that doesn’t seem to realize when her throat’s not large enough. You’re supposed to leave some room for swallowing.”

“You _prick._ ” Fuck professionalism—they were in her office, the walls were soundproofed, and he had just crossed the line. Throwing crude insults at her only made him look immature, but implying that she didn’t know what she was doing? That was an entirely different matter.

Her hand swung around and just touched his cheek when fingers slammed around her wrist, stopping it dead in the air. As slender and lightweight as Lancelot appeared, he certainly wasn’t lacking in the area of physical strength. Which made it all the more likely that he was lacking in the area of mental capability.

She snarled and yanked at her hand, trying to draw his attention there while she brought up her knee. But Lancelot deflected her leg with a quick shove and then pinned them both against the door, too close for her to strike. But not too close for her to lunge at his mouth and sink her teeth in his lip.

He gargled a ‘bitch!’ and stumbled back, dragging her with him; Guinevere’s stiletto heel finally wrenched and she lost her balance. Of course, she wasn’t going to fall without taking him as well. One arm around his neck, one around his waist and he was locked to her. That did mean their tongues were more or less forced into each others’ mouths, but sacrifices had to be made.

“Ow! Shit, Guin—the suit’s fucking Italian!” Lancelot whined, sucking on her bottom lip. His hand had swept up beneath her skirt and was expressing his annoyance with quick, rough finger twists that had her underwear out of the way and her body rocking into his palm within a few seconds.

“So get it out of the way, idiot.” And just so he couldn’t call her on hypocrisy, she whipped off her own expensive jacket and had her blouse untucked so he could nuzzle into the neckline without straining the fabric. His teeth dipped low enough to graze a nipple, and even though it was through her bra, her spine shivered her whole body.

Grumbling some more, Lancelot worked off his jacket and tie while Guinevere attended to his trousers. Though that certainly wasn’t out of any desire to help him, and so she didn’t wait for him to free his arms before she shoved herself down on his cock.

“God—” Lancelot fell back on his elbows, which were forced into strange angles by the coat still sheathing them, and stared up at her with fuzzed eyes. It was the only time she ever could understand why people—women particularly—applied the word ‘adorable’ to him.

Her underwear was rucked up around one thigh and the elastic was digging painfully into her skin, but that was a small thing compared to the harsh, electric stretch-snap-stretch of adjusting to the sudden fullness inside. She looked up at the ceiling to hide her moment of weakness and concentrated on breathing from her gut.

Palms slid up and down her thighs, and then curved to abruptly yank her over and down. Grin firmly in place, Lancelot used their momentum to power his first thrust. “Red’s a nice color on you. Better than that disgusting brown thing you wore when you almost fucked up the Ghiradelli case.”

“I didn’t ‘almost fuck’ that one up—now, what you did with the Davies case _was_ fucking up. The housekeeper? Please.” Guinevere lashed out, caught a few of his curls and yanked down his head to gnaw that fucking smile off his face. Her legs snapped around him and squeezed till it was she who was directing the pace, and he that was panting to keep up. Snot-nosed _bastard_ \--

Five minutes later, she was carefully swiping between her legs with a tissue while, with an equal degree of care, Lancelot tucked his shirt back into his pants. His fingers smoothed precise folds into the fabric before he swung on his coat and shook out the wrinkles in it.

“It’s so funny watching you primp,” Guinevere snorted. She dropped the soaked tissue in an ashtray, lighted it off the same match she used on her cigarette, and watched it burn while she straightened out her underwear and bra. Her blouse had a few large wrinkles that wouldn’t go away, so she folded those back to where her coat jacket would cover them.

“And it’s funny how when you do it, it’s maintaining a professional appearance, but when I do, it’s girly primping.” Confidence dented not in the least, Lancelot swiveled to check his hair in a wall mirror. He frowned, studying the problem, and then mussed it from a telling tangle to a stylish tousle. “Look, Guin—I’ve got more experience than you when it comes to ex-paramilitary.”

The scorch of nicotine down her lungs helped keep her temper in check. “And you have shit experience when it comes to the antiquities black market. You were working drugs up till two months ago.”

“Drugs, Degas—they can’t be that different. Buyer and seller, transportation the trickiest part…whereas ex-military’s not anything like the con-men you’re used to.” Lancelot did up his tie and spent far too long centering it.

After a count of five, Guinevere elbowed him aside so she could fix her own hair. The bun was completely wrecked and she didn’t have time to redo it, so she simply pulled out the whole thing and finger-curled some of the waves to properly frame her face. “Don’t be a jackass. Oh, I forget—you were born one, so you can’t help it.”

“I don’t know why I even bother having sex with you,” Lancelot retorted, spinning on his heel and heading for the door. “It damn well doesn’t improve your temper any.”

His footsteps came to an abrupt stop. The skin on the back of Guinevere’s neck suddenly prickled; she checked the mirror’s reflection and then stifled a groan as she turned.

Pellew looked disapproving. If she could ever figure out how that man managed to radiate a _wilting_ aura of censure, then she’d be set for running an Interpol regional office. As it was, Guinevere was having a hard time resisting the urge to pout and hang her head.

“I see neither of you received the memo I tucked into the casefile,” he said. A file flipped into view and then began rapping a no-nonsense rhythm against the doorframe. “You both received the case because you’re working together on it. Not competing. Understand?”

There was only one possible response to that. “Yes, sir.”

“Good.” Some of the storminess in Pellew’s face lifted. “I believe you’ll complement each other very well. Good hunting to you.”

And the way he said that made it clear he wanted his belief to become fact, and one had to be much more stupid than Guinevere—or Lancelot, she grudgingly admitted—to cross Pellew’s desires. Damn.

Lancelot shot her a commiserating look, momentarily cooperating. Then he produced his car keys from his pocket.

“ _No_. You are not driving, you careless maniac.” Guinevere flicked hers out and stalked through the door. First.

* * *

In actual fact, Lancelot hadn’t even read the casefile past the line where it’d listed all Interpol agents working on it. So he supposed he should be grateful that Guinevere had brought her copy to the car, but frankly, he didn’t feel like giving that bitch an inch she didn’t fuck out of him.

All right. That had been a highlight of the day…though sooner or later, they’d have to decide whether they could actually screw without having to argue up to it. The whole thing was not only not healthy, it was hell on the furniture in their apartment.

“Your turn to pay the electricity,” Guinevere said. She wasn’t reading his mind; they just always discussed personal finances while driving somewhere. It was about the only thing they could both speak calmly about, since concrete numbers made it harder to unfairly distribute responsibility, and neither of them wanted to crash another car.

Though she could’ve made that yellow light without risking a hair on her pretty head, Lancelot muttered to himself. He flipped through more of the file, scanning and committing details to memory. “Fine. You’re cooking this week. And—a college professor?”

“It’s the only specific name and number in the intercepted courier’s papers that could be deciphered. Codes says that maybe they’ll have more by the end of next week, but whichever idiots did the apprehending brought the courier down in a fucking puddle. So everything’s blurry _and_ coded.” She hung a left and flipped off the enraged bicyclist she’d just cut off, but completely failed to grab the hole that had opened up right in front of them.

“I can read, Guin. And Christ, if you’re going to let those semis push you around…”

The look she shot him was venom incarnate, albeit in a form that was easy on the eyes. Lancelot attempted to remember why they were living together…right, because when they’d started, it had been saving them money and no one else had wanted to take the gorgeous Welsh girl. Well, now he knew why.

“Given the rates of your car insurance, I’m sure you know better than I do, _Lance_.” They shot forward into an off-road, and within seconds were zooming through past nondescript buildings marked with the Avalon College emblem. Guin flipped her hair out of her face and threw a smile at a cluster of gaping male students.

Rolling his eyes, Lancelot returned to skimming. Customs caught a courier coming through JFK carrying fifty thousand in uncut diamonds and an ugly little stone figurine that was apparently worth twice as much. Courier was also carrying contact info, enough of which was readable to show that the money earned was intended to fund a nasty little group of mercenaries currently reigning in the New York underworld. Local law enforcement supposedly could handle the mercenaries, but they couldn’t trace and cut off the hitmen’s source of funding, which was where Lancelot and Guin came in. But…a college professor?

“And Introduction to Philosophy, no less,” Guin observed once they were inside the lecture hall. The auditorium was predictably large and ill-lit, but not so much so that Lancelot couldn’t note the unusually large number of students. The overwhelming majority was women, all dressed to flaunt and wearing far too much make-up, but many of the males were also…

Guinevere was staring at one excruciatingly obvious type, who had his hand flapping like a fish out of water and his hipbones thrusting up from very tight, very ugly purple-leather pants. “You know, I don’t remember philosophy being so popular in my college…”

Lancelot shrugged and tried to make himself comfortable in his seat, which was of dubious sturdiness and was set too close to the row before him, so his knees were shoved into his chest. He belatedly regretted letting Guinevere have the aisle seat, and his regret only increased when he glanced at the fluttering-eyed girl sitting next to him. On second thought, maybe he should’ve just let Guin have this one.

Then the professor walked in. Maybe the lighting was bad, but it wasn’t bad enough to hide the obvious. “Good morning.”

“Hel _lo_ , Professor Pendragon,” Guin purred, sliding down a little. Her tongue flicked over her lips, and she absently began rearranging her hair.

“Definitely not your type,” Lancelot muttered. When he did the same, he discovered that at the new angle, his view of the man’s arse was greatly improved. “An academic? Guin, you get bored just waiting for a file to upload. What he probably does for fun is pick out the typos in encyclopedias. I bet he’s a terrible dancer and he can’t hold his liquor, either. He’ll embarrass you at every office party.”

Today’s lecture was something about Descartes, but Lancelot was having trouble figuring out what because he kept getting distracted by the voice. Textbook-pronunciation and grammar combined with a rich huskiness. And a British accent, and it’d been forever since he’d heard one besides Pellew’s and his own.

“In that case, he’s not your type either.” Now Guin had a fingertip pressed to her lips, and she was starting to bite at it, much to the distraction of a male student sitting across the aisle. “He’s big enough to properly get you on your back.”

Lancelot sank his teeth into his lip and slouched lower, trying not to embarrass himself. She was going to pay for that. _After_ they’d interviewed Professor Arthur Pendragon about his possible connections to—God, that was a nice arse.


	2. Philosophy 150

A half-hour break in between his first Intro lecture and his lecture for his Humanism and Capitalism class usually gave Arthur just enough time to switch his notes, get fresh tea, and duck into the bathroom, if he so happened to need that. But today, delay was waiting in his office.

To be accurate, it was flipping through his classical Roman texts and it was also smoking by the window so the ashes would drop out, as he didn’t have an ash-tray. He coughed politely and the woman with the cigarette flicked a slow smile at him. The man disordering his books nodded, expression serious but eyes dancing, and shoved back a Pelagius anthology in the ‘M’ section. Arthur’s urge to object was narrowly overruled by the sharp warning prickle of his instincts.

He tried not to let that show. For all he knew, they could be on some innocent errand. “Can I help you?”

“Arthur Pendragon? Undergrad in Philosophy, Politics and Economics and Ph.D in Philosophy from Oxford, now resident Monmouth Professor at Avalon College? ” the woman asked, pivoting. She held everything still except for her ankles and feet, so she remained more an elegant silhouette than a person. When he nodded, her smile widened to show teeth. “I’m Guinevere DeGrance, and—”

“—I would be Lancelot DuLac. We’re from Interpol, and we’d like to ask you a few questions in connection with a case of ours.” The man absently rubbed at his hands and stepped back from the bookshelf, eyes flitting about the room but always coming back to rest on Arthur. He briefly showed his identification.

Interpol. Arthur’s feet twitched hard, wanting to run, and he was momentarily afraid that that showed on his face, but then he made himself move. The best cover, he’d learned through hard experience, was in staying too busy to lapse. “I see. I’d be happy to help you, but I have another class in an hour, and it’d be difficult to get a substitute lecturer at this late of a notice. Could we possibly put this off till later?”

There was a misshapen candy dish Vanora’s son—the one with the freckles and the scarred eyebrow—had gifted Arthur last Christmas, which should do. And if it didn’t, an ungrateful little voice muttered, then he finally had an excuse to get rid of the eyesore.

He picked it up as he came forward and set it down on his desk by Guinevere, who murmured a thank-you. She leaned over to stub out her cigarette just as he rounded the desk, her hair grazing a sweet perfume over his shoulder. “I’m afraid this is an urgent matter,” she said. “But if we could ask you a few preliminary questions now, I think we might be able to put off the rest to a more convenient time.”

“Fascinating class, by the way.” Lancelot had wandered over and was now reading Arthur’s lecture notes along with him. “How long have you been teaching?”

It was hard to tell whether the incongruity of the conversation twist signaled entrance into a suspense-drama or a farce. And the odd looks Lancelot and Guinevere were shooting over and around Arthur weren’t quite clarifying matters, though they were putting absurd notions into his mind. “Five years here. One at Oxford.”

“And you’re only thirty-six.” Guinevere reached out and tapped a long, gleaming red nail on the notes. “Typo.”

For some reason, that made Lancelot twitch. Closer to Arthur. And Guinevere had failed to lean back as well…Arthur hastily gathered up his papers and backed out from between them. He snagged a pen from the steel-wire organizer and corrected the date. “Thank you. What kind of case are you here to see me about?”

“You got your degrees early, too—five years, total. Which leaves a bit of a gap…something like seven years?” The other man had swiveled to follow Arthur, and now Lancelot slipped around to brace himself against the desk to the right of Guinevere. He swept back one side of his jacket with one hand, then tucked that hand into his pocket. Combined with the hair and the face, he looked rather like an polished-up gangster from the East End. “What were you doing then?”

“I—”

But Arthur never had a chance to deliver his usual excuse; they certainly were a well-rehearsed and well-trained pair. “Do you have any interest in antiques?” Guinevere interjected.

“Antiques?” The surprise was genuine, since Arthur had been expecting them to ask about something completely different. “Are you sure you should be speaking to me? I do enjoy the museums here, but I’m afraid I’m rather—”

“Artwork. Artifacts. Very pricy items.” Lancelot tilted his head to scan Arthur’s face for some sign, then exchanged a glance with Guinevere. “No?”

Arthur gave them an emphatic shake of the head, blinking in confusion. “No…”

“Oh. I see,” Guinevere sighed, looking downcast. She visibly seemed to crumple a little, her shoulders drooping and a curl of her hair falling to veil one eye.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t be of more help,” Arthur added, a shade before he’d finished thinking through his response. But she did seem so disappointed…and so did Lancelot.

“Well, thank you anyway.” One smooth roll of the hips saw Lancelot off the desk edge and on his feet, and saw Arthur slightly distracted. Apparently, that was noticeable because the other man threw him a careless grin. “Oh, by the way? What were you doing during those seven years?”

They were very good. Arthur had to give them that, in between his mental slaps at himself for flinching. The moment he did, Guinevere’s shoulders went back and her head up, making it quite clear that her earlier dejection had been a…a sympathy ploy. Damnation.

“I think we should make an appointment for lat—” she started to say, honey voice sticking false sweetness in Arthur’s ear. However, the mesmerizing delivery was rudely interrupted by a cell phone ringing.

The bane of every lecturer, but for once Arthur was grateful to the damn things. Especially after he saw the time. “If you don’t mind, my class is starting in two minutes,” he hurriedly told them, sidestepping Guinevere’s attempt to grab his arm.

She missed, as it was her phone. Lancelot, however, didn’t. Moreover, he managed to hang on halfway down the hallway in spite of Arthur’s fast pace. “Hey—”

“I’m really very sorry, but—” they turned into the narrow side-corridor that ducked behind the lecture hall “—the department secretary has my schedule. You can stop and see her on the way out to schedule a time; I think I have an opening later this afternoon. But right now, I have a class I need to teach, and it’s unfair to keep the students wait—mmmph!”

Crunching sounds—paper crumpling. Wet tongue playing havoc with Arthur’s brain by way of his mouth. Palm. Forcing his hip against some irregularity in the brick wall.

Old reflex pulled up the last few seconds and did an instant analysis: Lancelot had turned with him, but had gone faster to overtake Arthur. Then he’d used their momentum to twist them backwards, and he’d promptly shoved his tongue into Arthur’s startled gasp. One thing was clear. Arthur’s physical reflexes definitely had degraded. Then again, he’d _wanted_ them to—though apparently he wanted Lancelot further down his throat as well. Or his hand did, since it’d somehow ended up in Lancelot’s hair and was yanking the other man forward.

Muffled sounds were coming from nearby; Arthur stared over the curls he was ripping at and saw the door to the auditorium. Class. Interpol. Damn, damn—he pulled on Lancelot’s hair till he could talk. “I need to—”

“Tell you what.” Hand pressing between them, beneath Arthur’s tie and down his shirt. “Situation’s complicated. Long explanations.” Mouth transferred to his throat and sucking the blood to flush heat just under his skin long after Lancelot’s lips had moved on. “And you seem to like this.” Hand now feathering fingers over Arthur’s prick, and completely disregarding his—his—it should’ve been a distressed squirm. “So dinner. When’s your last class?”

“Is—is this supposed to be some kind of blackmail? What happens if I say no?” Arthur breathed hard through his mouth and attempted to get his hands between them. Problem was, they seemed to like staying on Lancelot.

There, they could feel the stiffening run all through the other man. The licking and nibbling at Arthur’s neck abruptly stopped and Lancelot lifted his head. It was quite dark in the hallway, so all that Arthur could see was a cold, judging glitter.

Then Lancelot chuckled, and he relaxed till Arthur was supporting virtually all of his weight. “If you said no and I still tried, then you’d have an airtight accusation of sexual assault to take to my boss. So you’re safe. Unless you’re afraid that even the slightest scrutiny on you might turn up something.”

If Arthur wanted to, he could simply put his palms against Lancelot’s shoulders and push. He could. And instead, he let his head fall back against the wall and grimly resigned himself. It’d been a nice six years. A better six years than he deserved, so there was no point and no justice in avoiding his reckoning.

Which at the moment consisted of a sharp jabbing elbow in the side. Lancelot removed himself, gaze now intensely curious. “Bloody mixed signals,” he muttered. It didn’t seem as if he meant for Arthur to overhear that. A little louder: “Or we can do an interview in your office, and after everything’s settled, I could come back and ask if you like Thai or Italian. By the way, if you’re trying to take the fall for someone, you shouldn’t. It’s never worth it.”

“If I’m trying to…?” Arthur belatedly noticed the disaster that his clothes had become and hastily tried to salvage some order from them. He shoved his shirttails back in his waistband, internal time clock blaring his lateness at him. “I’m not—what would I be taking a fall for?”

The lag between his first word and his correction was far too long, and both of them knew it. Wincing, Arthur reminded himself to work on that before the interview; he was far, far too rusty, if the visit was really about what he suspected it was.

“I can’t believe you don’t have a wedding ring,” Lancelot snorted, stepping back in. He batted aside Arthur’s hands and fixed Arthur’s tie with a few deft, quick moves of his fingers. “Or have you taken a vow of celibacy?”

That irked an old grievance of Arthur’s. “Why, exactly, does everyone assume I’m a monk? There are other perfectly—”

No, he couldn’t fall back in Lancelot’s mouth because he had—“I have class,” Arthur gasped, prying the other man from him. “I’ll—”

“Six good for you? Great. I’ll pick you up outside.” And then, having rewrecked Arthur’s clothing, Lancelot pecked Arthur’s lips and walked off.

On the other hand, Arthur wasn’t sure whether he’d come across anything remotely like this. So perhaps it wasn’t his fault he had just completely fumbled the entire exchange—not that it’d made too much of a difference.

He was supposed to be worried about that, not…anticipatory. Actually, he was supposed to be thinking about Keynes. The afternoon was going to be very long and very hard on the nerves, Arthur thought as he opened the lecture hall door.

* * *

Not only was the bastard swaggering out of the corridor, but he was cheerfully whistling while he straightened his tie. Guinevere made sure to step hard on his toes when she pivoted to walk alongside him.

“Bitch.” But Lancelot was irritatingly breezy about the insult. “So pick-up here at six, and dinner to be provided by m--us. What was the phone about?”

On second thought, she should’ve said to hell with dignity and just slapped him. Considering how distracted he was, she probably could’ve gotten it in this time. “The phone was the office. Someone’s stolen a statuette from a private collection in Manhattan—same period as the one we’re currently sitting on.”

“Probably ours, then. They’ve specialized for moving one thing, and now that they couldn’t deliver the money to those mercs, they’ve had to scramble.” Lancelot was fiddling with his hair again, slowing to check it in a window as they headed to the parking lot. Then he finally figured out the rest of what the new development meant and he grinned at her. “Oh. Your specialty, isn’t it? So I take it you’ll be going uptown to check that out, and won’t be able to join us for dinner.”

“No.” It hurt. Not only because he hadn’t even lifted a finger and he’d still manage to get one step ahead of her, but also because she genuinely wanted to do well on this case and now she was going to have to delegate an important part of the investigation. The first really significant one she’d gotten, and Lancelot was probably going to fuck it up with his stupid dick. “Do _not_ \--”

He fluttered a hand at her. As if she wasn’t even deserving of a full dismissal. “Guin, I’ve done an interview before.”

First she looked about the parking lot, which was tucked behind a building and thus fairly out-of-sight from the main pedestrian thoroughfares. In addition, the day was well under-way, so students were in class and weren’t wandering about to see anything like Guinevere clamping her nails in Lancelot’s shoulder and hauling him about to look at her. “You will be careful. You will be observant, and your observations will not be limited to his eyes and his goddamn cock. And if you let him off, and later it turns out there was something, they won’t find enough to identify you. Believe me, I’ve been visiting forensics enough to know how to do that.”

He rolled his eyes and shook her off, then tried to jerk his door open. Her sweetest smile on, Guin lifted the remote and beeped it at the car. The locks promptly clicked.

Lancelot was barely suppressing a snarl as they got inside. “For God’s sake, Guin. If I really were that bad, I would’ve been kicked out on my ass a long time ago. And anyway, the man’s throwing around enough signs to confuse an army of psychologists. First he’s hiding and doing not a bad job of it, and then he’s being guilty, and _then_ he’s…Jesus, if I were into giving punishment…”

“You make him sound like he’s more spineless than a jellyfish.” She twisted the key and let the engine roar a bit before she pulled out into the road. At least Interpol had the decency to give her a generous expense account, even if it also made her put up with Lancelot’s adolescent analytical skills. “Somehow I don’t think he’s without a sting.”

“Oh, definitely not.” The strange silence that followed that prompted Guinevere to look over, but it turned out that Lancelot was just busy staring glazed-eyed at some memory. Light-footed bastard. “Still. He doesn’t act like an ex-soldier. Well, except for the bookshelves… alphabetical, and organized by periods in chrono order as well. But he could just be anal.”

It was Guinevere’s turn to roll her eyes, and she swerved into the fast lane while she was at it. If she had to go, she might as well get uptown early and thus get it over with sooner. Husbanding her time right might even see her out soon enough to ring up Lancelot before he tripped Arthur onto the nearest horizontal surface. “What, did he turn you down? Or—no, I bet he would’ve, but you snowballed him so you wouldn’t have to hear his answer.”

The look Lancelot shot her could’ve doubled as a bullet. Then he propped his arm against the window and pressed two fingers against his lips, ruminating on something. “My self-esteem isn’t anywhere near that pathetic, and you know that.” He looked at her again, but this time it was with wariness. “He thought I was blackmailing him for it. And—don’t laugh, you cunt; you do this too—I was trying to see if he thought he’d need to do that. Partly. But he just…acted as if he owed it to me. Which is both faintly repulsive and--”

“Doesn’t seem to have dampened your interest any,” Guinevere drawled, but she did acknowledge the point Lancelot was making. That wasn’t a normal reaction to have, either for an innocent man or for a criminal trying to bargain his way out.

“Well, his reaction _after_ we straightened that one out was rather encouraging.” Serious moment over, Lancelot folded his hands behind his head and stretched out, smiling at nothing.

Guinevere eyed the movement of the cars in front of her. So he thought she wasn’t aggressive enough at driving…well, his almost-slam into the dashboard a second later was entirely his fault. He should’ve been wearing a seatbelt.

* * *

Gawain checked his watch, then the clock on the wall. All around him, the students were starting to get restless, and for good reason: Arthur was nine minutes and thirty seconds late. Another thirty seconds, and they’d be free to go.

“Maybe he had to take an emergency piss?” Galahad suggested.

“Arthur?” Which was all that Gawain needed to say in order to counter that. Professor Pendragon was notorious for his extreme punctuality.

Just then, the door across the space flew open and Arthur walked in, his normal stride weaving a bit. His tie was yanked out so the loop stretched to the third button of his shirt--which was pulled partly out of his waistband--and his cheeks were flushed, eyes slightly dazed. A deathly silence fell over the room.

“Oh...ah...” So clearly embarrassed it was painful to watch, Arthur straightened up and made futile efforts to reorder his clothing. He was still panting. “Sorry for...the delay. I hope...you’ve spent...your extra time...studying a little more for...today’s quiz.”

The usual groan that would've accompanied that statement didn’t come. Instead, a knowing titter started somewhere in the shadowed upper left and quickly spread around the room.

“Highly respected, you said,” Galahad muttered, attempting to fade into the blackboard. “An honor to be selected as his grad students, you said. Philosophy’s a good major for management, you said. Fuck. I should’ve just gone straight to business school.”

“Shut up.” Gawain halved the stack of quiz papers and shoved one half at the other man, then bundled off to distribute the other half. It kept him from staring too hard at Arthur; while Gawain had no intention of crossing school regulations about professor-student relations, he also wasn’t blind. Just when he was composed and neat, Arthur was a distraction great enough to alter the traffic flow in the hallway. And when he was disheveled like this…well, Gawain was glad that one, it was the first time this had ever happened, and two, they weren’t anywhere near a busy street.

Even with the inevitable complications of over-attentive women—and the occasional man—passing out the papers didn’t take much longer than five minutes. Then Gawain took up his post sitting on the top steps, where he could watch both the students busily scribbling away and Arthur, who now looked…less obviously ravaged.

The professor was clearly still shaken, and even from his high perch, Gawain could see how the raggedness of Arthur’s breath was making his shoulders jump.

“Excuse me.”

And Gawain nearly pitched forward to roll all the way down to the front. He grabbed at the arm of the nearest seat, then twisted around to glower at the whisperer. “We’re having a quiz, thank you.”

“I noticed.” Unruffled, the man squatted beside Gawain and absently flipped his messy long bangs out of the way, briefly revealing triangular tattoos on his cheekbones. He was frowning at Arthur. “What happened to him?”

“Oh…well, no idea, really. He just walked in like that; I saw him about two hours ago, and he was fine then.” Then Gawain remembered what he was supposed to be doing instead of chatting and winced. Damn it, he really didn’t want to lose his position. He hadn’t known Arthur too long, but the man was an excellent teacher and advisor. And he also paid the most, which Gawain needed. “I’m sorry, but I’ll have to ask you to leave since you’re not a student in the class. There’s no room for visitors.”

The other man nodded, a faint, amused smile on his face. “I noticed that, too. Do me a favor—tell Arthur that the heating’s fixed.”

“From…?” Gawain caught at the man’s sleeve and kept him from scooting away.

“Tristan.” He re-lowered himself, glancing again at Arthur. “You’re one of his new grad students?”

“Gawain. Galahad’s sitting on the other side. Are you one of the others in the department?” On closer inspection, Gawain saw that Tristan was not so young as he’d first assumed; in fact, they were probably about the same age. It was a bit difficult to tell under all that hair—before Gawain really thought about it, he’d flicked a lock out of Tristan’s eye.

Blinking, Tristan went very still. Then he gave a little shrug, letting it pass. “No. Arthur’s my guardian. Was, anyway.”

“Oh, I didn’t know he had an adopted son…what?” Tristan had given a little shake of the head, and Gawain was suddenly worried he’d made a blunder.

“I’m not that. But he was listed as my legal guardian till I was eighteen.” A flick of the eyes toward the clock, which Gawain should’ve been watching. “I think I need to go.”

There wasn’t any good reason to keep him, but Gawain’s hand still made an aborted move in that direction. Lips quirking upwards, Tristan deftly avoided it and melted back into the shadows. “Nice to meet you.”

“Same to you,” Gawain muttered, turning his attention back to work. The time for the quiz was nearly over, so he stood and got ready to start yanking papers from students. He didn’t particularly enjoy that part of being a GSI, though Galahad seemed to positively thrive on it…slightly better than taking it out as road rage, but still annoying.

* * *

Back at the office, Lancelot snagged some sushi from the cafeteria and chopsticked spicy tuna rolls while he ran data searches. The sketch of Arthur given in the file slowly began to fill out: upper-middle-class family, but all close relatives dead by the time he was sixteen, so despite the money he’d most likely had a crash course in maturity more like the kind street brats got. Excellent scholastic record all the way through…but occasional notation for troublemaking. Odd.

Though when Lancelot got to Arthur’s collegial information, it started to make sense. Protests, active in student political organizations…ah, an idealist.

And suddenly, right after getting his doctorate, Arthur Pendragon dropped out of sight. The next seven years were a complete blank.

Frowning, Lancelot put down the half-eaten roll and tapped a few keys. Nothing. He checked the other regional databases. Nothing. Just to check, he went through the French and Arabic databases, in case a file had gone untranslated. Nothing. It was still possible that something was hidden in a language he didn’t know, but at this point, Lancelot was doubting it. There were too many blanks coming up, and no explanation for why such an active personality would suddenly go silent.

Arthur’s next appearance was just where he’d said it was: a year teaching at Oxford, his alma mater, and from then on, he appeared to be the distinguished but unassuming scholar Lancelot had met. Queer. And not in a prospective way, either.

“Porn or work?” Guinevere leaned in the doorway, lightly rapping on the frame. She had her satchel slung over her shoulder, and the slight irregularity in the line of her jacket said she was armed as well.

Lancelot raised an eyebrow at that; their job wasn’t always conducive to personal safety, but it was uptown Manhattan she was hitting, not Brooklyn or the dockyards. Barely out of their office building’s backyard. “I have more class than that. I was trying to trace those missing years and I’m still not getting anything. People having mental breakdowns and turning into hermits leave more traces than this.”

“Have you checked for erasures?” Her bitchiness temporarily submerged as the problem caught her interest, too.

“Yeah. Nothing that I can see from here—I’ll send in a request to London and see if they can find anything. If they want to find anything.” Another explanation for the mysterious lack of information suddenly occurred to Lancelot. At first, he was inclined to laugh it off as too many reruns of X-files, but on second thought, it wasn’t unheard of. He leaned forward and sent off an inquiry to the British intelligence agencies.

While he was doing that, Guinevere had moved about till she could see what he was typing. She folded her arms in front of her and snorted her skepticism. “You think he was an operative? Come on—they’re usually better than that. If he was, they would’ve inserted some kind of cover-story to fill in the blanks.”

“Usually, but not always. And maybe he’s not an operative, but maybe he had some connection. Anyway, it doesn’t hurt to ask.” That settled, Lancelot picked up the chopsticks and finished his food. Which was bloody warm now, and tasted a bit off. Damn it.

“No, the worst they could do is clamp down on us so fast you wouldn’t have the time to pull in your balls,” was Guin’s acerbic reply. Her heels clicked a contemptuous tattoo on her way out.

Lancelot indulged in a rude gesture of chopsticks and fingers at her back, then kicked off the corner of his desk to spin around. Outside, the afternoon sun was playing hide-and-seek with a bunch of fluffy white clouds, causing the light to dapple and redapple itself over the room. The shadows traced graceful arabesques over the glittering skyscrapers of the city.

Possibly she was right to worry. But if Arthur was an active intelligence operative, then he should’ve called his superiors right afterward and there already should have been some kind of response. And if he was an inactive one, or retired…well, he was pretty damn young for that, firstly. Secondly, he should’ve been able to easily outmaneuver Lancelot and Guinevere. So it was something else.

It still was a good idea just to check, Lancelot thought. The last thing he wanted was to accidentally step into MI6’s territory; if he had to tangle with those creepy bastards, he wanted to do so with eyes wide open.

Though then the question would be why the fuck would MI6 be involved with a group of mercenary smugglers and hitmen? Maybe it was a red herring. Maybe Arthur had just snapped and wandered off into the woods for seven years…only to re-emerge competent enough to jump right into teaching and land a coveted chair at a high-ranked private college. Right.

Maybe Lancelot was just overthinking without having enough information to work with. He checked the time…still two hours till six, and his searches weren’t turning up enough for him to keep bothering with it. If he took care of the electricity bill and stopped at his apartment to spruce up a bit, he’d only be a little early. And anyway, it might be useful to do some more poking about Arthur’s office.

It was a good plan, and it worked all the way up to when he got to the Philosophy floor. The voluptuous redheaded secretary, who’d been perfectly friendly in the morning, shot to her feet the moment she saw him and stood, arms akimbo, in his path. “Mr. DuLac.”

Lancelot jabbed his short-term memory hard and squeezed a name out of it. He also dragged up his most charming smile. “Vanora. You’re a lovely sight to have twice in a day. Is the professor in?”

“Oh, depends. Are you planning on telling the truth this time?” She poked a finger at the middle of his chest, jaw firm and eyes blazing. “You and your lady friend said you were here to see Professor Pendragon about his research.”

“We were.” In a manner of speaking. Looking hurt, Lancelot stepped back as if he were that sincerely offended. As he did, he caught sight of the many, many gilt-framed photos crowding Vanora’s desk and he dove for the opening. Picked up the nearest and nodded approvingly at it. “Beautiful son you have.”

Vanora was unappeased and snatched it back. “I’ll thank you to keep your—hey! You can’t go back there! Not without my say-so!”

First lesson of crashing any occasion was to never pay attention to shouting coming from behind. It really was a pity, given how nice she’d been earlier, but what had to be done, had to be done. And currently that was skidding around a corner just ahead of Vanora’s raging pumps and…

…oh, how convenient. Arthur was right there so Lancelot could grab him and swing them both into an empty side-hall. And get a handful of that arse, since it was right there. “I take it you’re done with classes?”

“You’re early!” Arthur accused, a bit bug-eyed. Apparently, he wasn’t used to being spun around and then groped.

“Well, punctuality’s a hallmark of professionalism.” Lancelot untwisted his hand from Arthur’s sleeve and patted at the rumpled fabric. Then he paused—that had felt like a scar—

\--the sharp intake of air by his ear was all the warning Lancelot had. The next thing he knew, Arthur had spun them around to pin Lancelot against the wall. And fuck, but the man was actually kissing back now and he damn well knew how to do that. Definitely not a monk. At least, not a very devout one…

“You can’t—oh. Ah. Sorry to interrupt, Arthur. I thought…” Vanora’s voice flicked from strident to embarrassed to knowingly amused. “Silly man, you should just tell me who you’re seeing. Then I’ll know to let them straight in.”

“I—what—I’m not—we’re—he--” Arthur sputtered, letting go of Lancelot to direct a horrified look at Vanora.

But, like most women, she read what she wanted to see in his expression, then smugly patted his cheek. “I’ll just go block the way so you two aren’t interrupted again, all right?”

“That’s not necessary.” A whole sentence finally out of Arthur’s mouth, and it was to no avail since Vanora had already clattered out of earshot.

Lancelot gave his coat a few tugs and tentatively licked at his lips, testing how sore they were. He ambled up to Arthur’s side and tapped on the man’s elbow. “Seemed like it from where I was—”

Skittish as a deer, Arthur had jumped away from that light touch and was now staring at Lancelot as if he were a…a…an alien that burst out of men’s chests, or something nasty like that. If the man didn’t look so damned delicious like that, Lancelot would’ve rolled his eyes. “And next you’re going to tell me you had a temporary fit of insanity.”

“I…” Arthur closed his eyes and pinched at his nose, taking a slow breath. Then he dropped his hand and nodded down the hall. “I need to get a few things from my office, and then we can go. And…I’m sorry about that.”

“I’d just be sorry if we didn’t get to do that again,” Lancelot muttered, walking after the other man. He tried not to grin stupidly at the flush rapidly spreading down Arthur’s face.

* * *

In retrospect, that had been an incredibly stupid way to divert Lancelot’s attention. Some days, Arthur wondered why he’d bothered trying to live a normal life again, considering how off his instincts still were. And now the scar on his arm was itching and his lower lip was throbbing, low and aching, at one corner. He touched it with a fingertip and found a trace of blood.

“So I never did hear your answer. You have any food preferences I should know about? Vegetarian?” Lancelot meandered about Arthur’s office, frequently stopping to inspect this object or that book more closely. He had long fingers, and he seemed to be fond of running them over things.

Arthur swallowed hard, reminded himself once again what was at risk, and concentrated on slotting papers into his briefcase. “No. No food allergies, either. I…suppose I wouldn’t mind something spicy.”

He could use it to burn off the slow warmth creeping beneath his skin. God, six years of ignoring all the interested looks and having no difficulty in doing so, and suddenly he was acting like a teenager. It was grating. And stupid. An Interpol agent…albeit one that was very nicely put-together. Two, actually, and it was interesting that the second was missing. “Where’s Ms. DeGrance?”

“Something came up. There’s a small chance she might be joining us later, but it’s by no means likely.” The glance Lancelot send his way was speculative on several levels, and not all of them pleasant. Despite the man’s earlier disavowal, there was more going on than sheer…physical attraction.

That sounded about—something was tapping at the window. A quick look showed that Lancelot was still busy inspecting Arthur’s bookcase, so Arthur carefully backed toward the window and glanced outside. “Would you mind putting the books back in the order that you found them?”

“Oh, sorry.” Lancelot cheerfully reinserted one thick volume. Then he pulled out another and flipped through it, occasionally stopping to read a line.

Directly outside Arthur’s window was a tall, thick-branched oak tree, and sitting in it was Tristan. He made a questioning gesture at Lancelot, then held up his hands and twisted them as if he was wringing a small animal’s neck.

Arthur instantly shook his head, as he’d no interest in taking up that lifestyle once more. If the law came down on him, then it came down on him. On the other hand, he had a feeling that Interpol wasn’t the only group interested in his whereabouts, and the other possibility was not only decidedly illegal, but also extremely dangerous to anyone around him.

“‘For to win one hundred victories in one hundred battles is not the acme of skill. To subdue the enemy without fighting is the acme of skill’,” Lancelot read. His eyebrow arched, and he looked over just in time to catch Arthur blinking back at him. “Interesting sentiment. You’ve got it underlined…agree or disagree?”

“Qualified agreement. I would hope that humanity can develop ways of cohabiting without having to resort to any of Sun Tzu’s methods. But if war is necessary, the way that spares the most human life is best.” Hopefully, the stance in which Arthur was standing was blocking sight of Tristan.

It seemed so, since Lancelot turned back to the book without having any kind of reaction to the otherwise. Arthur silently sighed in relief and turned back to flap a sheaf of papers at Tristan. Then he mimed hiding them under his jacket before tucking them into his briefcase.

Tristan looked a little dubious, but he nodded his acknowledgment and slipped out of the tree. With any luck, he’d have gone through their brownstone and made sure anything untoward was safely hidden by the time Arthur got home.

“What are you looking at?” Lancelot was suddenly beside Arthur, staring through the glass.

Arthur barely avoided flinching. He thought he managed his reply with commendable steadiness, all considering. “There was a squirrel. Fat little thing…he comes around and begs once in a while.”

“You don’t feed him, do you? Because then you’ll never get rid of him.” The other man leaned forward, peering at the thick green foliage. He gave up after a moment, one shoulder lifting in a shrug, and made a grandiose gesture at the door. “Your car or mine?”

His. And it was his choice for the restaurant as well, as Arthur was trying to keep as much of himself separate from the situation as possible. When under suspicion, show as little personal preference as one can.

It was almost amusing how fast old thinking patterns returned, given the proper circumstances. It should also have been reassuring, but all Arthur could feel was a deep, bitter hollowness, which tended to convulse whenever he tried to put food in it. Shame, since the Thai was top-notch.

“Sensitive stomach?” Lancelot, on the other hand, was chowing down with great gusto. He’d kept a light, witty monologue going, which mostly covered up Arthur’s failure to fully engage himself. To any outside observers, that was; this couldn’t have been making a good impression on Lancelot.

“No, I’m…it’s very good food,” Arthur lamely said, poking at a perfect pink shrimp. He tried to work up an interest in transforming his visual appreciation of it into gastronomical appreciation, but he met with no success. “So what’s the case about?”

The amused chuckle Lancelot emitted was mostly muffled by his mouthful of food. Before answering, he washed it down with a healthy swallow of the wine—God, it was such a waste. Arthur reminded himself to get the tip, too, since he was already feeling guilty over how much of his meal was going to go straight into the trash.

A clinking caught his attention and he looked up to see Lancelot, now thoughtfully watching him. “You can stop worrying, you know,” the other man said. “There’s no way someone acting as obviously as you could make it in any line of crime. Honestly, what is it—overdue parking tickets? Oh, never mind. We should probably get down to business.”

“I would appreciate that. I’ve work to do.” Some of Arthur’s irritation from earlier surfaced through his worry and crept into his voice. He mentally slapped himself and shoved that back down where it belonged.

“God, you are one dedicated man.” Chopsticks waggled in his face, then dipped to filch the shrimp from his plate. The delicate morsel disappeared between Lancelot’s lips, which were bruised and—if Arthur kept slapping himself, he was going to end up with a very sore mind tomorrow. “I’m currently tracking a smuggling ring. Deals in high-end antiques, artwork. Scythian gold jewelry, that kind of thing. We caught one of their couriers, and he happened to be carrying your name and phone number.”

Something twisted hard and sharp and cold in Arthur’s stomach, and beneath the table he dug his fingers into his thigh. Above the table, he let his confusion show, but kept his other emotions rigidly under wraps. “Really? I…I have no idea why…did you get a name for him?”

Pause while Lancelot snitched another shrimp. It wasn’t the time to be amused, but the likeness to Vanora and Bors’ brood was too apt; Arthur smiled and shoved his plate over to the other man.

“Thank you.” Faint embarrassment momentarily colored Lancelot’s face. “Thomas Mallory—you know him?”

Not only did Arthur know him, but he also now had a way out. Mallory had been a pugnacious punk, but Arthur could’ve kissed the man if he’d appeared in front of him.

As it was, Arthur tried to restrain himself to the appropriate degree of surprise. “Yes, actually. Old schoolmate of mine…we were together in a rather radical student organization, but I dropped out to pursue my doctorate. I lost track of him after that. Spent seven years buried in some private research, in some very isolated places.”

“Any idea why he might want to contact you?” Arthur’s noodles were rapidly disappearing into Lancelot’s mouth, yet the man maintained a commendable clarity of speech.

“Not the slightest. Possibly for nostalgia’s sake, but we were never that close…” Shrugging, Arthur picked up his wine and let a good half of it vanish down his throat, as he was finally in a state of mind to appreciate it. He set down his glass and threw his napkin on the table. “I’m sorry I can’t be of more help. I hope you have better luck elsewhere.”

And that was when something grazed Arthur’s knee. He startled, then started to look down, but Lancelot speaking prevented that. The touch turned into a full press of a knee against Arthur’s own, and then a slow slide up the inside of his leg.

“Well, you might be able to help with _that_.” Lancelot’s voice had dropped about a half-octave and was suddenly rather like liquid smoke. He was also easing himself around the table, which was ridiculously small, come to think of it…

Arthur found himself kneading the edge of the seat. Which was difficult, considering it was wood. “This is an…ah…interesting way to conduct an investigation.”

Those very, very dark eyes started to roll, but arrested themselves to continue staring at Arthur, producing an effect that had to be similar to what a mouse felt when spotting the cat the moment before the pounce. Of course, that reminded Arthur of Lancelot’s behavior the other two times they’d been relatively isolated, and _that_ turned Arthur’s empty stomach into soup. Though he couldn’t quite decide whether it was with horror or with…well, the man was bloody attractive. And it’d been a while.

Now the knee was just resting against Arthur’s cock, which was starting to take notice. Oh…fuck. On the other hand, this was completely—indecorous, for one.

Lancelot put his hand on the table and rose a little out of his chair, leaning in so his and Arthur’s noses were nearly touching. He tilted his head just enough for Arthur to see how long and thick his lashes were. “It’s interesting how you keep bringing _business_ into this.”

Then the other man was completely on his feet, knee withdrawn, and he was moving to get their coats from the hooks on the wall. From a bystander’s viewpoint, it probably had just looked as if Lancelot had gotten up and squeezed around the table like anyone else would.

Arthur closed his eyes and took a deep breath. He took the coat handed to him and slowly put it on so that by the time he was standing, he wouldn’t make a complete fool of himself.

And then he did so anyway. “Would you mind dropping me off at my house instead of at the campus? I actually don’t drive to work; I usually walk home.”

The grin Lancelot flashed over his shoulder didn’t help settle Arthur’s stomach at all. “Sure.”

* * *

“God! Yes!” Galahad scratched long furrows in the thick carpeting and pumped his hips forward twice more as he came, while the blonde beneath him moaned and puddled, her long legs relaxing from their tight hold on his waist. He dropped to his elbows and grinned, kissing lightly at her slack-mouthed, exhausted whimper. “Good?”

“Oh, Jesus…I’ve got a fucking meet tomorrow and I won’t be able to move…” Her head lolled with every pant. “Yeah, good.”

He patted her on the forehead and carefully got off, then stripped the condom from his prick and tossed it in the trashcan. The arc it made through the air perfectly framed Gawain’s repulsed face. “For God’s sake, we fucking eat in here.”

“Eee—ohmygodohmygodwherearemyclothes—” The girl—Sandy? Cindy?—went from limp piece of flesh to scrambling red-faced squeaker in an impressively short time. No wonder she was on the track team.

For his part, Galahad took his time putting on his clothes. He and Gawain had been roommates, then apartment-mates all through undergrad, so it wasn’t as if they hadn’t seen each other naked plenty of times. Not to mention dumped each other in the shower after drinking sprees…well, all right, that was mostly Galahad, but Gawain had had a few of his own. “Thanks, ‘wain. Just because you’re between boyfriends, you’ve got to scare off my tail?”

That earned him an annoyed grunt and a thwap on the head from a bunch of rolled-up papers. Gawain stalked around the office space allotted to them to his desk, where he started to dig around in the stacks completely blotting out its surface. “Aren’t you supposed to be grading quizzes? We’ve got to have all of them done in two days.”

“And they will be. But Christ, we’re not in the military. We get time off for fun.” Galahad retrieved his shirt from a nearby bookshelf and threw it on. “Why are you back here? I thought you were going to spend the night in the g-brary.”

“I was. But that one’s missing the volume I need, and I came back because I wrote down a couple other places I could find it…” A paper was triumphantly thrust into the air, and then almost immediately thrown across the room in frustration. “Fuck!”

Blinking, Galahad stooped to pick it up. Why would…oh. Only one of the locations was actually a library; the others were storage facilities. And prying anything out of those was an absolute bitch. “Uh. Maybe you could fuck one of the librarians? Cindy—Cinda—the girl you just chased out of here thinks that quiet one’s gay. You know, what’s-his-name?”

“It’s a good thing you didn’t go to business school. You have no head for personal-interaction skills. And his name’s Dagonet, and he’s married to the librarian that works the u-brary. Fulcinia. Which was why he quietly overcharged you a late fee when he caught you flirting with her, you jackass.” Gawain snatched the paper from Galahad and administered another whack on his way out.

“Hey, I’m just trying to help!” Galahad shouted after him. Wasn’t much point in it; Gawain just went storming off, probably to go see Arthur since their advisor had an eerie gift for making resources turn up. _He_ probably had the whole library staff eating out of his hand, what with the eyes and excessive politeness.

Galahad finished dressing himself in much worse of a mood than he had any right to be in, given that he had managed to come before Gawain had interrupted. And that, unnoticed by Gawain, he’d actually graded all of his share of the quizzes before he’d invited that knockout English major in for a little cross-departmental interaction. So he didn’t have any reason to feel bad. He certainly didn’t have any reason to let Gawain ruin the night, since it wasn’t his fault the library didn’t have—

\--oh, goddamn it. He grabbed his jacket and ran down to the parking lot just in time to jump into the car beside Gawain. “Jesus Christ. I’ll come in early, borrow the carpet-washer and clean the spot. All right?”

Gawain blinked. “Okay…”

“Great. Now start the car; if Arthur’s got it, no problem, but if we’ve got to sneak into the back stacks, then you’re going to need someone to boost you to the window.” Galahad shrugged off the weird look he got. “You’re my roommate. If you’re gonna be pissy, _I’m_ the one that’s got to live with you.”

“Someday you’re going to find a girl to knock you on your ass, and I’m going to laugh and laugh,” Gawain muttered, but he was already looking a little less stressed.

* * *

Two hours ago, Guinevere had given up on getting out early. One hour ago, she’d started plotting ways to avoid Lancelot, should he happen to come back disgustingly smug and…and…and well-laid. Bastard. It was completely unfair. They could’ve at least had the decency to tell her she was dealing with a murder as well as a theft; then she could’ve come prepared and she wouldn’t have had to scramble about, borrowing things from people. She could almost hear them snickering derisively behind their hands.

“Fresh off the press, forensics prelims.” The man handed her the thick file and was about to add a flirtatious comment, but Guinevere didn’t feel like going through that routine. She glared and he scuttled off.

With a sigh, she sat down at her desk and started reading through the analyses. To all appearances, it just looked like a robbery turned bad, but little niggling details kept striking at her. Perfect, clean theft—not a trace of the burglar to be found—yet the body had taken five shots, only the last one being fatal. That was either messy as hell, or deliberate cruelty.

The victim, however, had been a well-to-do, inconspicuous businessman: rich enough to have a small art collection, but so nondescript that no one had anything to say against him. Guinevere propped her head on one hand and desultorily flipped through the pages, thinking of the undoubted fun she was missing because of this horse-shit. Arthur—

\--seven years of nothing. Frowning, she flipped back and checked the dates on the skeleton bio. Then she turned on her computer and started searching.

Not seven years, but five years. Graduate of Oxford, same year as Arthur, and though the length of time wasn’t the same, the absolute paucity of information for those missing years was. So was the general time-frame.

Very odd. Very, very odd. Guinevere thought a moment, then picked up the telephone. Perhaps they shouldn’t have dismissed those statues as just cargo to be sold, then. There was more going on here than money.

* * *

Thank God Arthur was the carpeting type, and not one for hardwood floors. Otherwise it would’ve been a lot more painful to go tumbling to the floor, and as it was, Lancelot’s elbows and knees were going to be a bit jarred, come morning. Not that he cared now, when on top of himself he had a firm, lean body slowly writhing out of its clothes. He yanked down Arthur’s shirt another inch and bit at the bared shoulder, then licked at the red marks he’d made.

“Oh, God…” Arthur buried his face deeper into Lancelot’s neck, mouthing at the skin there, and frantically rubbed their pricks together. His hands would clench in Lancelot’s pants, unclench to drag them down a bit, and then clench to a stop when Lancelot twirled a tongue in his ear. “Fuck.”

“Yes, that sounds about right.” Lancelot hooked a leg around Arthur and pulled him up, adjusting the angle of pressure till things momentarily blacked out. He licked a long streak up the side of Arthur’s neck, following the vibrations of the man’s absolutely gorgeous deep moan. “You have any—”

_Ding ding dong dong ding._

Goddamn fucking piece of shite—

\--God, Arthur was pretty when he was dazed. “Doorbell?” he asked, raising himself on his elbows.

“What’s that?” Hands molding to Arthur’s hips, squeezing and moving and slowly mapping out the firm long muscles there. It was a nice view from below, watching how his lower lip trembled when he groaned and the way he twisted into Lancelot’s caresses.

_Ding ding dong dong ding._

“No, there’s someone.” Well, at least Arthur sounded as irritated as Lancelot felt. With a sigh, the other man peeled himself off and staggered toward the door. About halfway to it, he suddenly remembered personal appearance and made some frantic clutches at his clothes. Ridiculously cute.

Lancelot flopped backward and muttered at the universe’s fucking awful sense of humor, then made a decision. He got to his feet and, since they were coming off anyway, stepped out of his trousers. His tie and jacket were somewhere in the entryway, so no need to worry about that. Just his shirt left, and that garment looked rather nice draped over Arthur’s armchair.

Arthur was standing with the door shut as much as possible, talking to someone through the crack. Sweat was making his shirt stick to his back, nicely outlining the top third of his spine and his shoulderblades, and his pants were dangerously low on his waist, mostly secured by the hand he was pressing to his right hip. “…Professor Cobham should have a copy. If she doesn’t, I know I’ve got one, but it’s back at my—gah!—office! My office!”

Tasting salty wet skin through cotton wasn’t quite as good as the Thai had been, but the shiver Arthur made certainly was delicious. Grinning, Lancelot curled himself tight against the other man’s back and traced out one shoulderblade with his tongue.

“Are you all right?” the other person said.

“I’m fine. What’s—I think Galahad’s blinking your lights,” Arthur choked. He backed up a little and reached behind to bat at Lancelot, but then something happened outside and he had to grab at the door again. Which gave Lancelot free rein to nibble at the nape of Arthur’s neck and scrape his teeth, in short teasing strokes, down Arthur’s spine. 

The person outside moved, probably to look at the blinking lights, and Arthur twisted to glower at Lancelot. Then he actually saw Lancelot and his eyes widened quite a bit before he went back to glowering. “I would very much appreciate it if you put some clothes on.”

Lancelot gave it a moment’s thought, just for politeness’ sake. Then he nipped at Arthur’s jaw. “No, I don’t think you would.”

“For God’s sake—” Sound on the other side of the door, so Arthur had to turn back. “I’m—I’m terribly sorry, Gawain, but this isn’t quite a good time. Come early tomorrow if you’ve no luck, and I promise I’ll help then. Is that ahhh—all right?”

Easing his hands into Arthur’s trousers and feeling about proved to Lancelot that maybe Arthur was embarrassed, but his prick certainly wasn’t. In fact, it was making a spectacular handful. And the way Arthur was jerking his hips back against Lancelot, rubbing and pressing at Lancelot’s cock, was almost enough to make Lancelot’s knees melt.

“Uh…yeah. Are you sure you’re—” Gawain sounded as if he had more than a little idea of what was actually going on.

“Yes. Perfectly fine. Have a good night, and see you and Galahad tomorrow morning.” Arthur got out the last few words in an almost unintelligible rush, then slammed the door shut and flicked the locks. “Don’t you have any sense of—”

And there went Arthur’s pants. Caught off-guard, he tried to whirl around and got his feet tangled in his fallen trousers, which made it easy as swallowing for Lancelot to knock them over. He clamped himself to Arthur as soon as possible, straddling one of Arthur’s thighs and rocking against it while he re-explored Arthur’s mouth.

After a moment, a gargled sigh passed from the other man into Lancelot’s mouth, and Arthur put his hands on Lancelot’s back. They rested there for a moment—Lancelot pointedly flicked at one of Arthur’s nipples—and then stroked down and up, over back and buttocks, sides and hips and wherever they went, they spread a tingling heat that melted the ends of Lancelot’s neurons. He murmured and moved against Arthur, tangling them together while Arthur rolled them over and did an awkward but thankfully short shuffle-crawl into the next room.

A quick hand-flopping in a nearby drawer produced a jar of Vaseline™, though for some reason Arthur looked bemused upon seeing it. “He puts these in the oddest places…”

“He?” Lancelot stopped twining.

“Huh? Oh, not—I’m not seeing anyone. I meant my…I suppose you’d call him an adopted son, though he didn’t need a father when I met him. Tristan.” Arthur’s gaze went distant with sudden worry. “Damn. I hope he wasn’t coming home tonight.”

Well, no reason for him to pause, then. “Ahem.” Bucking of hips together to drag Arthur’s attention back. “Shag?”

“Oh, right.” The worry snapped out of Arthur’s face and he fumbled to get his fingers slicked up. 

That concerned Lancelot for a moment, but once Arthur had gotten his fingers inside of him, there was no fumbling. There was just grabbing at Arthur’s shoulders and arching at every clever flutter of fingertips, and then there was panting through the hard stretching that usually preceded a good fuck. And that prediction held true here; Arthur went at fucking with an intensity and focus that was absolutely devastating. So incredibly different from the confusing, hesitant professor…Lancelot had to just hold on and try to ride it out. But then Arthur, still so _considerate_ , got a hand down and started working Lancelot’s cock, rubbing a thumb over the head, and he was also coming down for a hard kiss with every shove in, so that Lancelot had to let go and crash apart.

Usually Lancelot was back on his feet within a few minutes of climax. Most people made the mistake of assuming inability to move due to exhaustion equaled intimacy, so he tried to avoid any misunderstandings. And anyway, it was hard to find someone that could take him that far. Even Guin couldn’t do it all the time—they’d developed a kind of partial immunity to each other.

But Arthur had. And, listening to the man’s breathing slow, Lancelot muzzily thought that in this case, he wouldn’t mind a wrong assumption. So when Arthur turned around and nuzzled at the side of Lancelot’s face, Lancelot slung an arm around the man’s neck and held him there.

When something rang, Lancelot thought time had bent back on itself and that they were repeating the evening. But then he rubbed his eyes clear and saw the sunlight streaming through the window, and he realized they’d actually fallen asleep on the floor. Hell. He hadn’t done that in years—and God, the crick in his back was why.

Something was still fucking ringing...oh, right. That was his cell. Damn thing tried to flop out of his hand when he dug it out of his trousers. “Hello?”

*Get off his fucking cock and get down here, you jackass son of a bitch.*

“And good morning to you, Guin,” he groaned. It took a second to lever himself up because beneath him, Arthur started shifting and murmuring. And Arthur looked even better peeled out of that suit. “Be down in a few. Here.”

Thank God for gentlemanly reflexes, for Arthur just took the phone and answered it without firing off any nasty questions. “Hello?”

* * *

“Lancelot, you goddamn bastard, you’d better be—”

*Hello?*

Guinevere stuttered, swallowed it so she wouldn't embarrass herself, and sat down. Fuck, but Arthur had a nice morning-after gravel in his voice. “Arthur. Hi. I hope I didn’t wake you--it's a bit early…anyway, how would you like to come down and see our offices? It might be necessary for your personal safety.”


	3. Prerequisite

What Gawain liked about Avalon College was that it was small without being exclusive: everyone basically knew everyone else, but as it was decently in the city, there was enough in-and-out traffic to prevent stagnation. It made for a nice relaxed yet vibrant atmosphere.

And yes, it made it a hell of a lot easier to keep tabs on people. Normally Arthur was the last person with which Gawain had _that_ problem, but yesterday morning had definitely changed that.

“He’s…going to be in phone contact till Friday. Possibly.” Galahad shoved his hands in his jeans pockets and rocked back on his heels, staring at the sign taped to the door. For the most part, it was written in Arthur’s precise, elegant hand, but the last two letters trailed off into an intriguing squiggle. “What the fuck? He’s never missed a lecture.”

“ _Exactly_ what I said, though of course in less direct language.” Lace flounced in between them, and a rich contralto warbled from the puzzled Professor Cobham. She put one hand on her hip and frowned at the posting. “Well. I thought I was dreaming when he rung up to ask me to cover his turn, but I suppose not. Oh, Gawain—I got your message, too. And here it is.”

She poked the book that had ruined Gawain’s night at him, which he gratefully took. “Thanks. You wouldn’t believe how grateful I am, Professor Cob—”

“Oh, call me Kitty. Professor just sounds too stiff, like so much whalebone propping up us stuffy academics. Though I’ll make an exception for dear Arthur.” If Professor Pendragon was the fantasy of the college, then Professor Cobham was the idol of it; she carried off a joint professorship in Economics and Drama in grand but never arrogant style. Up close, fine wrinkles betrayed a grandmother twice over, but the sparkle in her eye as she beamed speculatively at Gawain showed the still-lively divorcée, always ready for a little tit-for-tat. “Speaking of, I’ve been hearing the most delicious rumors…”

As was typical of him, Galahad was completely ignoring anything that wasn’t related to his current annoyance. “Oh, great. Humanism and Capitalism is covered by you, but what about tomorrow’s Intro lectures? Does this mean we’ve got to put up with Professor Dieck--”

Gawain cut him off with a smack upside the head before he could say anything stupid in front of a full professor. “What rumors?” Gawain quickly asked, trying to distract Kitty’s keen sense for gossip.

She was still eying Galahad with a few questions in her eyes, but something about Gawain’s desperation must have persuaded her to take pity on them. “Oh, just that Vanora caught your advisor tonguing a gorgeous fellow Brit yesterday. In fact, I believe it was right over there.”

Kitty pointed, and Gawain made a note never to lean on that wall again. Then he made a note to break Galahad of that annoying habit of snorting disbelief. With a rolled-up newspaper, if the man was going to be that immature.

“Great. So what, he’s fallen madly in love and is eloping?” Unneeded emphasis was added by Galahad’s overdone eyerolling.

Frowning a little, Kitty smacked him on the shoulder. Then, when he hunched over to grab at the point, she whacked him at the small of the back so he had to straighten up. “Chewing the scenery not only is unfair to your castmates, but also tends to give you indigestion. Anyway, the really interesting part was that the Brit was a man.” She pouted for a second. “I think I’ve just lost five dollars in the office pool.”

“You had him pegged as straight?” Galahad had skipped back a few steps and was now watching Kitty with a mixture of caution, accusation and offended pride. “Come on. He’s so organized.”

“He’s British and in academia; that doesn’t tell you anything for certain. And no, actually I had him pegged as bi and possibly open to poly. But it’s been years and I’ve not seen him take a second glance at any of the girls.” Despite her obvious disappointment, she was smiling quite broadly.

For obvious reasons. First Galahad’s lips twitched and he swallowed hard, a flush spreading from his throat upwards. He tried to press his mouth firm and still, but the more effort he put into it, the worse the twitching was. Finally he whirled past Professor Cobham into the GSI offices, barely muffling a laugh.

“He doesn’t believe you,” Gawain observed.

Kitty shrugged, not a single inch of her lace skirt ruffled out of place. “Oh, most people have a bit of a problem seeing the world the way I do. I’ve been telling students for years that economics is nothing but drama written in numbers, but they insist on being intimidated by it. Pity—oh, I’ve got to run. Just drop off the book in my office whenever you’re finished.”

“Thanks again,” Gawain called after her. Then he turned around to look at the sign again.

Personal emergency, out for the rest of the week. That certainly was unusual, and not only because it was out of character for Arthur. Gawain hadn’t thought the man had had any family till he’d met Tristan, and even then Tristan wasn’t a blood relation. It was strange…well, no point on dwelling on it till he could ask Arthur about it. And with all the inevitable upset in the schedules, he’d best get working.

Five minutes later, he had his bag loaded and slung over his shoulder, and was walking briskly towards the g-brary. The mess Galahad and his blonde had left last night looked even more disgusting in the light of day, and Galahad had just started to clean up. If Gawain had to pull extra hours today, he’d rather do it somewhere that was at least sanitary.

He was passing a broad-branched, grand old maple tree when something plopped beside him. Gawain stopped and picked up…a sneaker. Old, worn, smelling more of grass than of the usual foot-stink.

“Thanks.”

“Jesus!” The next thing Gawain knew, he was flat on his ass, bag spilling papers and books over the ground to his right, and staring wide-eyed up into the tree.

Tristan was hiding his laugh, but he was being a lot more gracious than Galahad about it. His hair was bound back in a loose ponytail, but a generous number of bangs had slipped out to stripe-mask his face, and he had a squirrel on his shoulder, chittering away at the stupid human below. And he was missing a shoe. “The chapel’s two blocks that way, if you’re looking for a religious experience.”

Reason slowly crunched data into a conclusion: Gawain was having a weird day. That settled, he persuaded his body that it didn’t belong to a klutz who’d just tripped himself and sat up. The shoe went up to Tristan, who snagged it and curled to slide it on in one seamless, teetering motion that had Gawain momentarily panicking for the other man’s safety. Not that he was in any position to judge gymnastic skills, since he couldn’t even walk properly.

He started stuffing his things back into his bookbag. “You know, a lot of religious experiences didn’t happen in a church.”

“I know.” Foot re-shod, Tristan continued twisting about till he was lying on his back. The squirrel moved to his chest and they traded pokes with forefinger and paws. “Arthur’s got exact numbers somewhere on that.”

“I told him what you said, by the way.” Gawain rezipped his bookbag and stood up. He lifted a foot, then said to hell with it and resigned himself to another late night to catch up. “What in God’s name is your major?”

The other man stopped playing with the squirrel and glanced down at Gawain. It was hard to tell, given the hair and the blank expression, but Gawain thought he saw a spark of interest in Tristan’s eye. “Forensic science.”

“That squirrel looks pretty alive…” Lame comment. In his defense, it’d been a while since Gawain had done this.

“My undergrad was biology, field-based. I try to keep it up.” Tristan petted the squirrel, then sent it off with a gesture of two fingers and thumb that was too fast for Gawain to really see. Then he seemed to roll off the branch—Gawain jerked forward, but Tristan was already on the ground and grabbing his bag from where it’d been half-hidden in a bush. “Where are you going?”

Gawain checked his watch and promptly cursed. “Right back inside. I was going to hit the g-brary for a bit, but the class I’m GSI for is starting in seven minutes. Speaking of, you wouldn’t happen to know what’s the personal emergency Arthur’s got?”

The air cooled. Then Tristan blinked and everything was normal again. It’d happened so damned fast…but no, the man had definitely been assessing Gawain, and not for any regular reason. “I’m in the Conservatory all afternoon—I work at the raptor center. Come on up after your class is done.”

“Ah…yeah, okay. Thanks.” That weird moment was still throwing Gawain, and so he’d gotten three steps before he realized he’d forgotten to say see you later, or something polite like that. But when he looked back, there wasn’t the slightest sign of Tristan.

God, he was an idiot; Gawain mentally slapped himself and checked the trees. He waved at the one that was rustling _against_ the direction of the wind, and then grinned when the rustling stopped. A bit more cheerful, he headed back for the Philosophy department.

* * *

As soon as they walked in, it was glaringly obvious how Lancelot had spent his evening. His _slightly_ lopsided saunter bloody oozed with self-satisfaction, and the way he kept turning to whisper in Arthur’s ear was a particularly grating method of flaunting newfound intimacy. If it hadn’t been so damn unprofessional, Guinevere would’ve thrown a stapler at his head.

“Morning,” Lancelot caroled, breezing through the doors of his office. He could do that; he’d had a reward for his lack of sleep, and he hadn’t spent hours pouring over a bloody torture-murder scene.

Meanwhile, the other agents gave Arthur a collective double-look; he was a little too tentative to be someone in the business, and a little too visually spectacular to be the usual kind of criminal they handled. Contrary to the movies’ idea of things, most criminals were flashy, overdressed slugs who figured money negated the need for personal hygiene.

Arthur’s hands were twitching at his sides as he turned about, as if he wanted to put them in his pockets and hunch away but was too polite to. He stepped vaguely in the direction of Lancelot’s office, eyes wandering about the place, and then spotted Guinevere. Whereupon he smiled, and she had to grab her wrist to keep herself from fussing with her hair. “Ms. DeGrance?”

“Call me Guinevere. ‘Ms.’ always makes me feel like a schoolteacher.” Well, if Lancelot was just going to abandon him like that…Guinevere smoothly whirled Arthur into her office and death-glared the other agents into acknowledging the lay of the territory. She ushered him over to her desk, which was covered in open files. “Chrétien de Troyes. A businessman in Manhattan who was robbed and murdered last night. Interestingly, the perpetrators only took this.”

The flicking of the photo before Arthur was rather well-done, she thought. His jaw tightened a little, but not so much that it couldn’t have been attributed to casual swallowing. More telling were his eyes, but again, the glint there didn’t remain long enough for her to determine anything from it. He was much less uptight than yesterday—goddamn Lancelot. Arthur had had time to get himself braced against any more lapses.

“Identical to the statuette recovered from the courier, Thomas Mallory.” She tossed a second photo before him. “And I’ve a report hot off the wire from Ireland, where Mallory’s flight originated. Murder there as well—a Peter Bede. They were all in your class at Oxford.”

“Yes, the names are familiar.” Arthur said the words slowly, voice having dropped to a low murmur. He appeared to be calculating odds on several options at once, and he was watching her closely enough that she wished it wasn’t because of the situation.

A sound at the door made Guinevere glance at it, only to see Lancelot amble in. He still looked too damned smug, but at least he’d picked up on her intent and was coming in quietly. And his complacency was bending into a pensive frown as he watched Arthur.

Come to think of it, Arthur’s stance had changed. Barely perceptible, but nevertheless, it had. “We were all part of a radical political group—I told Lancelot a bit about it last night, over dinner.” The color briefly flushed into Arthur’s cheeks. “Later, I understand it turned violent and mercenary, but that was long after I left. Peter stayed a few months longer, Thomas another year. But while we were there, nothing happened. Just some drunk university students, shooting off their mouths.”

“Do you have one of those statues?” Guinevere pressed. She leaned forward, following a hunch, and saw a telltale flicker in his eyes. Another inch forward, so her hair was just brushing his shoulder. “Arthur. Please. We’re trying to help you, and we can’t do that if you don’t help us.”

Arthur lifted his head to look at her, and the way he moved wasn’t hesitant at all. His eyes were brilliantly clear in their honesty. And their regret, which made Guinevere even more raw. “No. I’m sorry, but--”

“Ahem.” When they turned towards him, Lancelot made a mock-apologetic face. Then he hooked one thumb over his shoulder. “Guin, I need to see you for a moment. Oh, and Arthur—there’s coffee if you want any. I know we didn’t really have time for breakfast…”

_Damn_ him and his bloody cute gesture to show how considerate he was. Some days, all Lancelot seemed to be fit for was flipping upside-down so his head could be used to scrub toilet bowls. Fucking curls certainly would’ve made him a good brush.

“No, thank you. But—” Arthur patted himself about, then came up with a cell phone “—can I make a phone call? I left my colleagues and my grad students barely any explanation, and Tristan—”

He was entirely too composed. Closed-down. At least yesterday, he’d been reacting with sincerity, whether he’d been trying to deny or to tell the truth. And if there was one thing that always got on Guinevere’s nerves, it was people trying to fake her out.

“If you stand over there, you’ll get better reception.” Guinevere barely managed to keep from shaking him and telling him he was a fucking liar and worse, a fucking idiot if he thought she’d believe him. She clamped down on herself, pointed and then dragged Lancelot to the other side of the room.

Once Arthur was standing by the window and thus couldn’t hear their whispering, she backed Lancelot into her coffeemaker niche. “So you fucked him first. Congratulations. But did you get anything useful while you blew our fucking hand? He was shaky and ready to break yesterday—today, nothing. You _dick_.”

“He admitted to knowing Mallory, and to being a student activist. He’s got scars from a few barfights when he was younger. And at the time, I thought that was all we needed to know from him.” He reared right back at her, furious like he had any reason to be. “Murders? Why the fuck didn’t you call earlier?”

“I wouldn’t have wanted to interrupt,” Guinevere acidly replied. She smacked the heel of her hand into his shoulder and ground down hard so he would feel the beat of her words even if he was letting the content pass right through his ears. “Anyway, I had to spend the whole night researching de Troyes—he’s got a big blank in his life, same period as Arthur’s but only five years long—and the news about Bede only came a half-hour ago. And if you hadn’t been busy with his cock, maybe you could’ve been responsible and come in to find out for yourself.”

Lancelot yanked off her wrist and then used it to pull her in, too fast for her to resist. “You goddamn cunt, can’t you forget about your petty jealousy and think about—” He was so angry the words twisted his lips too much for them to be spit out. For a moment, Guinevere stood in shock—he’d never taken that kind of insult seriously before.

Then Lancelot looked to the side, pressing his lips into a hard grim line, and dropped her hand. She promptly hit him on the temple, hard enough to get his attention but not hard enough to leave a mark. “What’s the matter with you?”

“Go to hell.” He kept up the peculiar stonewalling for another moment before giving himself a shake and meeting her eyes again. And there was the usual Lancelot, all business beneath the nonchalant exterior. “So Arthur’s a target, you think?”

That was a perfectly reasonable question to ask, given the circumstances, but he said it in a very odd way. His voice was a little cramped, as if he were repressing part of it, and his professional detachment was strained.

“Given the circumstances of the other two’s deaths—” she began.

What cut her off was the door swinging. Pellew came marching through it, expression like a man who’d swallowed horseshit and had to look stoic about it, accompanied by a bland-faced suit that set Guinevere’s nerves on edge.

“Sorry to interrupt.” Her boss gestured brusquely at the man with him. “This is Medraut Cowden. MI6.”

“I came in response to the inquiry Mr. DuLac sent.” Cowden had a voice like vanilla cream, and it left a sour taste in Guinevere’s throat. “I believe I’ve some news that would be of interest to you.”

* * *

Tristan set her back on her perch and waved at the bench to his left. “Have a seat. I’ll be a moment.”

“Ah…I’m okay with standing.” In fact, Gawain seemed to like wandering, since he came right up to Tristan’s side and looked curiously at the hawk. His hand edged out, then hastily snatched back to the rail. “Been meaning to walk through here, but haven’t had a chance so far.”

“All semester?” Surprised, Tristan paused in closing the cage and turned to look at the other man.

Gawain bore a strange resemblance to a teddy bear when he was embarrassed. He made a jerky, apologetic shrug, and it was suddenly clear to Tristan why Arthur had hired this grad student. Birds of a feather…sometimes his guardian could be so predictable.

“We…Galahad and I had some problems moving, so we only got here a few weeks ago,” Gawain muttered, poking around a stick with his toes. “Had to start mid-semester.”

As Tristan finished stripping off his gauntlets, he tried not to grin too much. The bashfulness was just so incongruous, given Gawain’s appearance. With that beard and the thick ponytail, most people probably would’ve mistaken him for some kind of delinquent. Like they did Tristan, though in his case they were probably closer to the truth.

“I guess this must be a pretty nice job, given your background.” The strap over Gawain’s shoulder was digging deep into the flesh, though he didn’t seem to notice. He was too busy checking things out and pretending that he wasn’t.

“It suits.” Tristan tossed the gauntlets onto a shelf and led Gawain into the next room, where he retrieved his bag and jacket. He nodded to the center director and continued on out to the parking lot. “I need to get a few things from the house. It’s a short walk. Maybe ten minutes.”

Gawain blinked, caught on, and hurried to join Tristan on his right side. “I’ve been stuck in a lecture hall since lunch. Be nice to get some air.”

They passed through the main courtyard of Avalon and Tristan dabbled in his fingers in the school fountain, then used it to slick some of his hair back. Arthur kept telling him to pull it back, and he probably should, but his hawk liked chewing on the strands.

Once by the fountain and once while they were passing the undergrad library, Gawain coughed as if about to say something, but never quite managed it. He kept looking over at Tristan, searching for clues, and Tristan let him. How a man acted when trying to open a conversation was one of the most telling hints to his personality, Tristan had found.

Eventually, Gawain stopped trying so hard. He laughed softly at himself and threw back his head, staring at the sky, just enjoying the company.

Then it was Tristan’s turn to sneak a few glances, since he hadn’t seen anyone do that since Arthur. And Arthur stared silently at the sky when he was depressed or angry or confused, not when he was happy.

“How long has Arthur been your…um…yeah. Since you said he wasn’t your adopted father.” When Gawain didn’t quite know how to phrase something, he had a habit of adding meaningless hand gestures. “I take it you two…ah…live together?”

Tristan caught himself trying to smile again. “Since I was seventeen, and no. I have an apartment three blocks from here. But I come over once a week to make sure he’s eating.”

Gawain shot him a familiar grin, warm and white. “Yeah, he does kind of forget about that when he’s researching. Vanora fusses over him a lot about that; it’s hilarious to watch.”

After a few more steps, Tristan decided what he’d observed merited a little more information divulged. “My mother and he worked together. She was shot and killed, and he took care of me after that. It was only a year to my majority, so that’s why I don’t call him my adopted father.”

“Oh.” More words wanted to come out of Gawain’s mouth, but he was patently uncertain of their reception. Interestingly enough, the emotion that seemed to be motivating those words was not pity, and not quite sympathy, either, though it certainly had qualities of both of those emotions. “Well, here’s where people say I’m sorry. But that just strikes me as…as irrelevant. You’re okay now, right?”

Very interesting. Tristan’s eyebrow started to arch, but then he realized it might be mistaken for him being offended, which he wasn’t. And _then_ he realized he wanted to be nice to Gawain, whereas usually he didn’t much care if the other person was uncomfortable or not. “Yes,” he finally said.

“Good.” Which was all Gawain said.

All he had time to say, because they were on the street to Arthur’s house, and Tristan’s nerves suddenly jangled. He raised his arms over his head in a stretch and took the opportunity to do a quick scan of the neighborhood. Everything quiet, but that car parked two brownstones down from Arthur’s wasn’t one Tristan recognized. And Arthur had given him a thorough description of Lancelot DuLac’s car, so that possibility was out.

Tristan casually took Gawain by the arm and pulled him into the nearest side-alley. “Do me a favor. Don’t ask any questions, and don’t make any sounds. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

Gawain blinked, but did as he was told. He leaned back against the wall, hands in pockets, and stayed quiet while Tristan went around the corner.

Too perfect. The man was starting to get Tristan’s hopes up, and he was starting to want to let Gawain do that.

Sneaking around to Arthur’s back-door was something at which Tristan had had much practice, so he was soon dropping softly through a second-floor window. The guest bedroom seemed like the safest choice, and his judgment was immediately borne out: no one there, but soft movements in the study off Arthur’s bedroom, and downstairs. Tristan got as low to the ground as he could and finger-pushed open the door, thanking Arthur’s compulsive housekeeping. Perfectly-oiled hinges, silent as the air was still.

It made more sense to tackle the person closest to his escape route, so Tristan slithered across the hall and peeked in the study. The shadow moving about, carefully riffling through papers and books and drawers Tristan had vetted the afternoon before, was tall and broad-shouldered—a man. And, in the brief instant before Tristan chopped a hand into his neck, his face turned into the sunlight from the window. There was a line of tiny red dots tattooing the curve of his ear.

Red Hound.

Tristan mouthed a curse as he caught the slumping body, easing it noiselessly to the floor. He quickly removed and inventoried the man’s personal arms, keeping the best and secreting the rest behind a thick set of encyclopedias; volume ‘D’ he left sticking out half an inch so Arthur would know. Then he trussed and gagged the man with the man’s own supplies before slipping downstairs.

One there, waiting near the door. He was alert, which was going to make this diffi—

“Don’t move.” The voice came from directly behind Tristan. British accent. Something small and cold touched the back of Tristan’s head, while in front, the other one stood and moved to cover him. “Scoot your hands out.”

He really hadn’t wanted to leave any bloodstains or bulletholes in Arthur’s house, but it didn’t seem as if he had a choice. Very slowly, Tristan did as he was told. And then he shoved off and flipped over to grab the tip of the gun. Jackknifed his legs to help throw the other man down. Something exploded by his head and splinters flew by.

They were professionals of a high enough degree that they didn’t curse when they fought. Tristan blocked the man’s punch and slammed into him, using his body to shield any more shots. Then he smacked an elbow into the man’s throat and kicked free, flipping out a gun to deal with the other—

\--who was down, temple bloody and rifle in Gawain’s hands. He stood back from the unconscious body and held up his hand, flexing it. Wince. “Ow. I’m out of practice.”

Tristan stared.

And Gawain noticed. “I didn’t ask questions, and I didn’t make a sound. You didn’t say anything about staying put.”

“It was implied.” Feeling a bit dazed _now_ , Tristan leaned down to knock out the choking, writhing man at his feet.

“Yeah, well, you shouldn’t talk to a philosophy major about implications. Ambiguity’s our specialty.” Gawain slung the rifle over his back in a way that expressed much familiarity with that as well. But when he met Tristan’s gaze a second time, he looked terrified and resigned and pleading all at once. His mouth opened, closed—his face cleared to resolve, and he finally decided on what to say. “We were late to start the semester because it’s harder getting out of a gang than getting in.” Shrug. “L. A. Bad district.”

Tristan felt the smile coming once more, and this time he let it bloom in its full wolfishness. “International. Same.”

* * *

The moment Cowden had walked in, Arthur’s stomach had frozen solid and it’d stayed that way all through the afternoon. His face felt as if it’d turned to ice as well, though that was probably fortunate for him, since it kept any reactions from showing.

After Pellew’s announcement, Lancelot and Guinevere had been bustled off to speak with Cowden, and Arthur had been quietly shoved into an unoccupied office with some trashy magazines and a rotating staff of ‘company’. Thinly-disguised guards.

Well, it gave him time to think. When he’d heard Mallory’s name in connection with smuggling, Arthur had felt instant relief because, though it was a crime, it was a far cry to what he’d feared was going on. But when Guinevere had tossed those photos at him and had listed those names, it’d been all Arthur could do to not break down and confess.

The reason he hadn’t was that it was very, very clear they had no idea what they were up against. And Cowden’s appearance a minute later had told Arthur that _he_ wasn’t sure what they were up against, even if he knew who. The bastard wasn’t MI6, but if he was in a position to impersonate an intelligence operative, then there had been some serious changes since Arthur had left.

He’d gotten out a warning to Tristan, so hopefully the man would have more information when—

\--when. When what? What was Arthur planning to do? Go back to that hellish, soul-sucking, black-bloody addiction? Not if he had to kill himself first.

Him dead, however, wouldn’t stop them. So he had two choices. He could call over one of the Interpol agents and tell them everything in hopes that one, they’d believe him, and two, they’d listen to his advice. If they moved now, they might be able to stop things; Mallory and Cowden both showing up meant that most of the group had to be here. Cerdic, certainly, and he was the head guiding the wheel. Without him, they were nothing but a pack of ravening, blood-blinded fighters who’d never learned to see beyond the next battle. Without him, they’d fall apart and be eaten by the underworld.

And Cerdic, therefore, was why Arthur was resisting his first instinct to turn the matter over to the proper authorities. Because he knew the man: how intelligent and cunning and farsighted he was. Because he knew the proper authorities: Lancelot curled up on his floor, dappled with sunlight, and Guinevere, staring so hard at him with pieces of his past spread out before her.

The second choice, on the other hand, was laughable. Go after Cerdic himself, after six years of pretending to be a peaceful, ordinary man so successfully that Arthur had let Lancelot and Guinevere set him off-kilter. He was out of practice, out of touch, and…

…and he was still afraid of the backslide.

“Isolde, Pellew wants to see you. I’ll take it from here.” Guinevere stood in the doorway, staring not at the other woman but at Arthur. She was worried and she was trying very hard not to show it, which meant that she only betrayed how bad the situation was.

Isolde huffed out, throwing insulted looks equally at them. Amused, Guinevere flicked her fingers in a derisive gesture. “Didn’t respond to her plumping her breasts in your face, I take it.”

“I don’t recall her doing that…oh.” Arthur started to stand, but she waved him back down.

Then she perched on the table edge and leaned in, urgently whispering. “Listen, because I’m not supposed to be here. I said I was going to the bathroom. Cowden says you were part of a paramilitary group called the Red Hounds. You helped organize finances—smuggling.” She paused to check his reaction. Curiously enough, she looked worried for him. “He also says you dropped out when they turned criminal, and that now they’re cleaning house.”

Shock was what she saw, and shock was what Arthur felt because he hadn’t expected Cowden to say _that_. After all, it was the truth.

Guinevere bent closer, wobbled a little and steadied herself by putting a hand on Arthur’s shoulder. That faint perfume from yesterday wafted from her hair and the white skin of her neck. “He’s here to help direct operations to shut down the group. Lancelot’s being sent to Brooklyn to meet someone there, and I’m—”

Arthur had grabbed her arm and yanked before he could think; she came all the way off the table and landed sprawling in his lap with a startled meep. But he wasn’t really registering that because he was panicking. “No. Get Lancelot back, and don’t let anyone go anywhere with Cowden. He—”

A finger crossed his lips, and Guinevere rose in his arms to look down at him, gaze more intense than the sun. But her jaw was firming, and not in his favor. “So he’s telling the truth. That you didn’t tell me. Or Lancelot, even though you bloody fucked him.”

“Yes, he’s telling the truth insofar as—”

“Don’t go professor on me, damn it. I’m not an idiot.” She shoved off of him and teetered, then caught herself against the table. Her eyes were blazing, and her voice was a low hiss, and she was more beautiful that way than when she was trying to be coy. “You could’ve sat down and told us yesterday instead of giving us the run-around. Instead of going off to fuck us two ways. And then your old schoolmate de Troyes would still be alive. What, Interpol’s not good enough, but MI6 has you running scared?”

Irritation rose too fast in Arthur’s throat for him to swallow. “Look, I’m sorry I didn’t, so you could solve your case sooner. But I didn’t know about him, and I didn’t know they were ki—right now you have to listen because—”

“Well, I seem to be doing nothing but interrupting.” Medraut posed in the doorway, one arm up to lean against the frame. Over his shoulder, Guinevere’s superior was giving her a disapproving look.

And she was off-balance, glancing between Arthur and the other men. Then she looked at Arthur and kept looking at him as she edged toward him. “Yes, you are. Now, if you’ll excuse me, this is still my case and Dr. Pendragon is my—”

“I’m afraid it’s a joint case now. Come on; we’re going to be late to Kay’s place, and you wouldn’t want to be responsible for another body, would you?” Cowden drawled, walking in to take Guinevere by the arm. Her hand twitched as if to push him away, but her superior gave her a glare and she subsided.

Arthur stepped forward, frantically shaking his head at her, but—what was his name? Pellew?—blocked his way. “Dr. Pendragon, I’m sorry, but—”

“You’re making a—do you care about your agents? If you do, you won’t—” Guinevere was in the elevator with Cowden, and Arthur was now being held back by Pellew.

“I’d behave a little better if I were you. Considering you’re now under consideration for charges of crimes against the government of Britain,” Pellew said, iron in his voice and grip.

Goddamn it—the frustration and the anger rose, boiled…and abruptly chilled to ice. So that was one choice settled for Arthur, because he’d never manage to explain everything in time.

He breathed, smiled—that was far too easy to remember how to do—and nodded. Casually reached down to the desk beside him and picked at the paperclips, palmed a few and kept one to dig hard into his hand. “Right. I apologize.”

Pellew was instantly suspicious, but Arthur stayed docile and calmly chatting with him till another agent came to escort Arthur to a different floor. Probably one with better security.

They were heading for a different elevator when Arthur slowed down, looking embarrassed. “I’m terribly sorry, but could we stop at that restroom there?”

“There’s one—”

“I’ve been drinking coffee non-stop all day, and apparently it’s decided to go through all at once.” He used the smile he saved for when Vanora had had an especially bad day with the children and needed soothing.

The agent was dubious, but apparently Arthur still looked harmless for he allowed Arthur to lead them into the restroom. A glance as Arthur pushed aside the door showed that it was empty. He abruptly stopped, let the other man walk into him and then pivoted around the door so he could slam it into the man’s head. Then he grabbed the agent under one arm and yanked him inside, ensuring unconsciousness with a quick blow to the back of the neck.

“Sorry,” Arthur muttered, searching the man. He came up with Interpol identification, a gun and ammunition, car keys. They hadn’t taken away his cell phone yet, so he left the man’s with him.

This part of the floor was quiet, partly obscured from view by a huge fern, and near a staircase. Arthur scrambled down one flight of stairs and then casually walked to the nearest elevator, which he took to the parking-garage floor.

He stepped out to the sound of alarms and promptly looked as confused and panicked as everyone else. Which wasn’t difficult at all, since he was feeling exactly that, stuck halfway between the man he had to be and the man he wanted to be.

It was near the end of the day, so many people were leaving. That made it easy to mingle and keep clicking the car remote until he spotted the car with blinking lights. He hurried toward it and slid inside just as someone shouted in his direction.

Obviously they didn’t have this alarm very often, because people had just stopped their cars all over the place and gotten out to see what was the matter. Arthur clipped a few rearview windows, wincing with each, on his way out. Though it wasn’t too bad--first piece of luck of the day that the agent drove a small, fast compact.

It handled so well, in fact, that he was almost sorry to wheel it into a tangle of side-alley and abandon it, but it was too easy to trace. He raced out of the alley and dodged into the masses of people on the sidewalks, hunching so his height didn’t make him so noticeable, and pretended to watch the car chase while he briskly walked up the street from it. When he hit normal traffic, he started scoping the cars parked along the curb. One soon presented itself and he got out the paperclips, straightening them into makeshift picklocks.

A car with a lock old enough for him to pick with only paperclips naturally was a piece of shite, but it’d do. Cowden and Guinevere weren’t going that far, anyway—and the bastard’s downfall had always been his tendency to gloat. Kay’s place, indeed. Kay was long dead, at Cowden’s hand, and the man would never get to visit his beloved neighborhood park again, would never sit and listen to Arthur’s long rambles as he unloaded his troubles.

Arthur sat back in the seat and stared between the hands he had clenched on the wheel, breathing shallow and slow. He’d forgotten how badly he’d wanted to kill certain people. And now he was having a slight problem remembering why he’d wanted to forget.

* * *

Guinevere had assumed they were going uptown, but soon after they’d left, Cowden took a right into a dreary, decrepit residential district. “You’re very beautiful, you know that?”

She was already sitting as far as she could from him, and her arms were folded across her chest to hide how her right had slipped inside her jacket. The cold weight of her gun was a small reassurance. “So I’ve been told.”

“Just his type,” Cowden sighed, a nasty edge to his dreamy smile. He pulled up next to a long-abandoned park and reached for the brake.

It was fucking hard to push off on three-inch heels, but Guinevere did and threw herself out the door. She hit the sidewalk and rolled just as a shot winged over her head, then scrambled for the back-end of the car. Spun back and clipped his shoulder when he flopped over the seat and hung from the door.

He ducked back inside and she could hear him falling out the driver’s side, cursing like mad. His posh accent was gone. “Fucking whore!”

Goddamn it, but she’d been hurt that her case had been wheeling out of her hands and that Arthur had taken Lancelot so damn quick and that the man hadn’t _told_ her anything, and she’d lost her judgment. She’d lost her temper as well, and she hadn’t listened when Arthur had finally had started talking. God _damn_ it. Usually she was better than that. More objective than—

\--footsteps and Guinevere whirled, shooting. Fire whipped past her arm, but it was only a scorch and dulled to a low ache after that first shocking second. Her shot, however, had taken Cowden high in the chest.

He staggered backward, choking and clutching at himself. His gun dropped to make a loud clatter and sent a shot into a nearby telephone pole. “Bitch.”

“You aren’t MI6, are you?” she said, carefully stepping around the back of the car. Her gun stayed squarely aimed at his head.

“No, he’s not,” said a new voice. “And you’re very good, girl, but you’re outnumbered.”

Guinevere froze. Then she slowly turned her head to the accompaniment first of Cowden’s laughter, and then his strangled gasp.

The man probably never knew what hit him. For that matter, Guinevere thought she’d suddenly taken up ESP, because Arthur couldn’t have been there and he damn well couldn’t have walked up that quietly. But then he cracked a gunbutt into the other man’s temple, and the sound was wet and strangely loud—it shattered the illusion and left only the stark reality. His face was ice.

He didn’t pause to see whether the man was fully unconscious, but kept on walking till he was standing over Cowden. “I told you I wanted nothing to do with it,” he said, very softly. His gun lifted.

So did Guinevere’s as she snapped out of her stunned state. “Arthur. I can’t let you do that.”

Cowden’s mouth opened in a wide, trembling ‘O.’ Arthur’s thumb slowly slid onto the gun-hammer.

“Arthur. _Arthur._. You can’t just kill him.” The world was shaking a little, so Guinevere planted her heels in it and willed it to stop. She tasted blood and hissed, thinking that Arthur had shot and she was tasting the splatter, but barely a beat later she realized it was from her own lip. “Arthur, this is not right—” no, lies wouldn’t work “—what about Lancelot? Brooklyn? Arthur, for God’s sake, don’t make me sh—sh—arrest you.”

Something in there got through, rocked him back so he blinked. Dazed, he shook his head and stared at her. “Wouldn’t you anyway? I’ve done worse than what he told y—”

And that idiot lunged for Arthur’s feet. It didn’t work; Arthur’s reflexes had improved by orders of magnitude and he leaped out of the way while Guinevere shot. Twice. Cowden’s head disappeared in a mess of bone chips and brain and blood.

“Oh…God.” Suddenly every single muscle in her body decided to unravel at once and she slumped against the car. Her breathing was very loud, it seemed, and it almost masked hesitant steps coming towards her.

A hand touched her shoulder. “Was…was that your first?”

“No!” she snarled, hitting out at him. Then her fingers caught in his shirt and she ripped him back and kissed him with every single ounce of herself. Hand in his hair, hand on his chest pressing the hot gun between them, body melting into his.

It was a moment before she noticed he was kissing back. Blinking, Guinevere withdrew a little. “You…Arthur, my God. Even if it was my first kill, I wouldn’t give a damn. I’d still be falling over because you almost made me shoot you, you fucking—” she hit him again “—goddamn men— _fuck_ , Lancelot.”

Who was her fucking son of a bitch to kill, if anyone ever got around to it. She started to go for the open driver’s door, but Arthur caught her with an arm and pulled her back. He had a cell phone out, and was talking at breakneck speed into it. “Tristan? Who do you know in Brooklyn—right. I’m—I’m sorry, but it is the Hounds, and—oh. You know. _Damn_ it, I…never mind. Listen, Lancelot is going that way, right into a trap. I need you to get to him first.”

Guinevere slowly stopped struggling and leaned in to listen. Arthur absently adjusted the angle of the phone so she could hear.

*Should I drop off Gawain first?*

If she hadn’t been lying right against Arthur, she never wouldn’t noticed the way he stiffened, it was so fast. The frightening hardness in his eyes momentarily reappeared. “Gawain? Why is he there?”

*Well, he…helped with the three bodies currently locked in the trunk. They’re alive, by the way. And your house has some bulletholes, but no bloodstains.* Whoever it was had a bizarre sense of humor that clearly came through the phone. He sounded almost bored, except for the wicked black edge to his voice. *Right now I’m staring at his and Galahad’s illegal gun collection.*

Someone on the other end sputtered and made all kinds of incoherent noises. Though he remained silent, staring into space, Arthur’s expression spoke volumes.

At last, he answered: “They’re both good young men that I expect will go on to have great careers, despite their childhood upbringing. You’re adults—if you know all the facts and make your own decisions, I can’t stop you. But Tristan—”

*I wasn’t planning on it any time soon. I can’t have coffee with your grad student if I’m in a coffin.* More choking noises, which nearly covered up Tristan’s farewell. *I can’t either if I have to go to your funeral. See you at the Interpol office.*

The line clicked off, and Arthur put away his phone while still struggling with something. He stared down at the cracked-open skull that was oozing around his shoes. “The Hounds were a combination of government operatives and bright young college students they recruited on campus. We were supposed to go in and stop wars before they started by knocking out potential warlords. But rivals want them dead, too, and they pay better than the government. The operatives were all slaughtered one night, and I was too late to stop that.”

“You were just the financial side…” Guinevere started to say. She fiddled with her gun, not quite sure how to handle someone like Arthur. He just…defied logic. Any kind of rational anticipation.

And he was laughing, hard-voiced and without any humor. “That, and one of their best field strategists. I have my share of blood on my hands. God…I should’ve known. Even now—I may be a professor of philosophy, but I’m no pacifist.”

“If you were, I’d be dead. So frankly, I’m glad about that, even if you aren’t.” Her brain finally began to start working again; Guinevere got out her own phone and made a quick call for back-up and body retrieval. Then a thought occurred to her. “We’re not arresting you. I don’t care how much you think you deserve it—you don’t. You just saved me, you’re going to save Lancelot—doesn’t that count for something?”

As she spoke, she turned to face him. His eyes flicked to her gun and she deliberately lifted it, then lowered her hand to press it against his. “This is what people have to do. Would philosophy or history, or anything you’ve ever learned in school, give you a different solution to the one we just used?”

His pupils had grown to nearly crowd out the green. When he spoke, his voice was as rough as the hand touching her hair was gentle. “I should’ve stopped hiding sooner. Either stopped them before, or told you two sooner.” Sudden remembrance and realization made Arthur wince and try to lean away, though his body definitely was reluctant to do so. “Guinevere. I…well, I’m not sure what exactly last night was, but Lancelot…”

God, the man managed to interrupt even when he wasn’t physically around. Since Arthur was still too fragile for much levity, Guinevere toned down her reply. “He and I actually have a…loose sleeping arrangement. Anyway, this is a lousy time to work out the details for that.”

It was a good thing guilt didn’t look half-bad on Arthur, because he used that expression a lot. He slid out from beneath her, stammering his apologies, and almost stepped on Cowden because he wasn’t looking. Of course, then his eyes shot down and the guilt was for all of that instead of for…imposing on her moment of weakness? Guinevere didn’t have moments of weakness. She just had moments where her thinking was lagging a bit.

“Arthur, look in the mirror sometime.” The other attacker was beginning to stir, so Guinevere knelt down and whacked him over the temple again. Then she got up and stalked after Arthur until he stopped backstepping and let her grab him by the lapels. “You are _not_ a criminal. Even when you are committing a crime, you’re not. You’re just not built for it.”

She muffled whatever he was going to say with her mouth. And after thirty seconds of futile struggling, he gave in to the better logic and let her.

* * *

‘Happy’ definitely didn’t describe Galahad’s mood. Neither did any of its relatives such as ‘content’ or ‘okay.’ And even ‘apathetic’ was pretty damn far from the truth.

He was a little bit amused, but other than that, ‘pissed off’ was probably the best descriptor. “Gawain, you goddamn dick. You leave me to put up with gushy Cobham, hold office hours all by myself, and deal with the morons that can’t read signs and want to know where Arthur is. You don’t call at any point to let me know what’s going on. And now you’ve got three bodies in the fucking bathroom, rifles on the table, and a tree-climbing voyeur on our phone? You’re supposed to be the responsible one!”

Instead of hanging his head, Gawain flopped around on the chair so he could stare at Tristan. “Tree-climbing voyeur?”

“I was stuck up one while he and a redhead had sex against the trunk.” Tristan listened to something and scribbled down a note. “Meant to drop my shoe beside them as a warning, but missed and hit his head.”

Gawain blinked. Then he covered his mouth with his hand and hunched over, shoulders shaking. Even when Galahad bounced onto the couch next to him and whacked him in the head, he wouldn’t stop laughing.

“What the hell is all this, anyway?” Fucking idiot was hopeless, so Galahad gave up and turned his attention to the other incongruities in the apartment. Incongruity, since bodies in the bathroom wasn’t exactly a new sight to him. “What are you doing here?”

Leaning back in the chair, Tristan slitted his eyes and coolly assessed Galahad. If that was supposed to be intimidating, he was wasting his time. Galahad had caught him playing hide-and-seek with one too many chipmunks for that to work.

“Arthur’s my guardian,” Tristan finally said. He jerked a hand at the bathroom door, which was starting to emit muffled groans. With a sigh, Gawain got up and wandered inside to make thwacking sounds. “He’s also a former member of a paramilitary group called the Red Hounds, which went mercenary and criminal about six years ago. They’re being chased by Interpol and some other organizations, and they’ve probably assumed that someone confessed. So they’re trying to kill Arthur, plus some Interpol agents he’s been sleeping with.”

“I can get that line of reasoning.” Given Arthur’s personality, he probably would be the most likely one to have a change of heart. Even if he’d been faking some of—wait. “Sleeping with?”

Gawain ducked his head back in the room. “What? You mean the gossip’s right for once?”

Tristan wasn’t obvious about it, but he definitely was the kind of person who enjoyed knowing more than anyone else. He said goodbye to whoever was on the phone and stood up. Fingered through the assorted weaponry on the table and snagged a few. “For the one that we’re going to meet. I think there’s another one, but I don’t know for sure.”

“Wait a minute…” Galahad caught at Gawain’s arm and dragged him back for a quick whisper-conference. “Hey. Juvenile records, remember? And you want to get involved with fucking Interpol?”

“You want to let Arthur get hurt? He knew. He _knew_ , you jackass, and he still took us on.” The look in Gawain’s eyes was hard, unyielding and pleading beneath that. He dug his fingers into Galahad’s wrist and pulled Galahad up an inch. “Anyway, how else are we going to get rid of those people in the bathroom?”

In point of fact, Galahad had already come to the same conclusion. But just because he was going to do it didn’t mean he wasn’t going to raise the necessary objections. If he was going to do something, he was going to do it for a reason and not on blind faith.

Not to mention that Gawain wasn’t telling everything, but his quick glance at Tristan did. “Okay, okay,” Galahad muttered, pushing off the other man. “But you can’t ever rag on me for the quality of my dates again. At least they never came attached to an international crime ring.”


	4. Thesis

“Next time, we’re getting London on conference call, or having them email a photo beforehand. It may be more work for them, but if they can’t keep their bloody experts from getting mugged in airport bathrooms…” Pellew went on for a few more seconds, and he had the right to all of them. Cowden hadn’t even been a plant in MI6; what he’d done was shadow the real MI6 man into a stall at JFK, knock him on the head, and steal his identity. It was a pretty smooth operation and due to MI6’s stuffiness about acknowledging mistakes, Cowden had had the time to take in just about everyone except Arthur. Which was damn insulting to everyone’s professional pride.

Again, except for Arthur. The man wouldn’t even take credit for what he’d done, but instead kept apologizing for not having the time to explain things and get it all done “properly.” Whenever his connection to the Red Hounds was mentioned, he would wince and his voice would drop to a gravelly whisper that would’ve been fantastically sexy if he hadn’t looked so hangdog about it.

“Have you heard from Lancelot?”

The question made Guinevere blink, startling her out of her musings. It wasn’t that she wasn’t worried about Lancelot—she was, and rather a lot, much to her annoyance—but that there were more uncertain matters to use up her attention. Lancelot could handle himself fairly well, and Arthur had also sent someone after him. Considering what she’d seen of Arthur’s abilities, she translated his ‘I did the best I could’ to mean ‘an asteroid would have to hit the earth to stop me.’

“Not yet, but he’s got this habit of losing his cell in a fight.” She put down the file on Cowden, hastily faxed over by an MI6 smarting from a Pellew-haranguing, and checked on Arthur’s face before she finished answering Pellew. “He couldn’t have gotten to Brooklyn before Arthur’s man caught up with him. Give it another five minutes.”

“I suppose you’re right. Lancelot’s cell phones take up an inordinate percentage of his expense filings.” Her boss’s diction was getting curter and more gruff with every second that Lancelot didn’t call, which was a surefire sign he was concerned. Hopefully, the jackass would stop gloating over his downed opponents and remember to phone in before Pellew finally snapped and hauled in someone like the FBI. Since Pellew had taken the director’s post, he hadn’t lost a single agent to violence, and he was determined to keep the record that way.

Arthur glanced up from the files he was studying. He looked even more on-edge than Pellew, as if by sheer force of nerves he could set things to rights. It was a wonder he hadn’t worked himself into a grave by now. “Tristan has a cell phone. He’ll call.”

“Tristan?” Pellew asked.

“My…ah…I never know what to call him. Godson might be closest.” One file separated itself from the pile before Arthur, seemingly of its own accord. After squinting a bit, Guinevere spotted the deft, covert motions of fingers and thumb he used to open the folder to a glossy photo of a woman. “He’s the son of Lizabetta Cornwell, one of the operatives in the group. She and I were good friends, and when she was killed by Cerdic, I took care of Tristan.”

Eyebrow raised, Pellew absorbed that with no visible expression on his face, but Guinevere detected a hint of bemusement in his manner. Understandably, since the more common story for children of agents with blown covers was a quick nasty death or a foreshortened, bitter life. Not to mention the implication that, since Arthur had unhesitatingly sent the young man off to retrieve Lancelot, he considered Tristan more than equal to any mercenaries that might get in the way. Guinevere wondered what Arthur’s conflicting impulses thought was a well-rounded education.

Final reaction was Pellew tucking in his chin in reluctance acceptance. “Very well. You seem to have the best handle on the situation—I don’t suppose you’ve ever considered joining another security organization? Interpol’s not as…flexible about some things as MI6, but it’s a good career for—”

“Oh. Oh, thank you, but…ah, no thank you.” Embarrassment replaced the haggard darkness in Arthur’s face, which was a slight improvement. It really was amazing how he could go from lethally focused to utterly adorable and still be sincere about each emotion. “I’ll just be happy to get back to teaching.”

“Well, to each his own, and I suppose what the world’s police loses, the education system gains.” Pellew actually gave Arthur a smile showing teeth. The best Guinevere had ever gotten out of him was an approving glint and a dignified nod.

She wasn’t jealous of Arthur, she reminded herself. He wasn’t in her line of work, and anyway, what she wanted was to get him where she could work that tension out of him.

Someone knocked at the door and they all turned to look. Isolde stood there, eyes dazed and face flushed as if she’d just been given a good, hard slap. She was panting and clutching at the doorframe for support, and for once it seemed as if she actually needed it, instead of her just trying to shove her breasts in some man’s face. “Pellew, sir? Downstairs…there’s a young man…asking for Arthur…has three Red Hounds in his car trunk.”

Arthur perked to attention. “Long hair or short and curly?”

“Short and curly…” She essayed a smile at him and Guinevere glared holes into the airhead’s empty skull. With all Guinevere had just been through, she wasn’t about to lose him to some skulking office blonde.

“Galahad.” He started for the door, but Pellew stepped in to push him back.

Seeing the objection in Arthur’s face, Pellew hastily offered reassurance. “One of the grad students you mentioned, I take it? He’ll be up directly, but we need to process him and his prisoners. Please just stay here and wait.”

Guinevere took Arthur by the arm and drew him back to the table, judging that he’d be less likely to throw her off than Pellew. After all, she had a bandaged arm and even if it was just a surface graze, yanking his arm away would still make it hurt. About as much as a bad scrape, but she worked with what she had. “You’d get in the way and make it slower. He’ll be fine.”

Reluctance still showed on his face, but he let the door shut behind Pellew without any fuss. Then Arthur quietly withdrew his arm from her grip and bent back over the table, pulling out this paper and flipping over that photo.

Her first reaction was to be insulted and to verbalize it, but if that worked for Lancelot, she doubted it would for Arthur. So instead Guinevere breathed till she thought she could be patient, then eased up beside him. She was just close enough for their sides to touch, but not so close that he should feel any pressure, lest he turn skittish again.

“I did a better job of sticking my head in the sand than I’d thought,” Arthur finally commented, running his finger along a sheet. The corner of his mouth briefly flipped up, but the humor motivating it was ironic and quite bitter. “I had no idea they’d gotten their fingers into so many pies.”

His tone was excoriating, but given his choice of descriptive saying, Guinevere suspected he was directing it at himself. “You had a reason for acting how you did, I assume. I doubt you’ve ever done anything without a reason in your entire life.”

“Stop flattering me. I like you better when you’re honest.” For a moment, Arthur was almost light and teasing as he looked at her. Then he sobered and lifted his hand to rest it carefully on her injured arm. “I wanted to get Tristan out of there. But he was perfectly capable of living on his own years ago, so that’s not a sufficient excuse. I suppose…I just got used to being a part of regular society. I do love teaching—it gives me more rewards and less pain than my other career choices.”

“So why should you be expected to give that up? Or to be suicidal and confront what is a very dangerous and well-organized mercenary group?” She covered his hand with her own and edged closer, staring up at him. He went still, but didn’t flinch when she lifted her hand to his cheek. So she went ahead and curled her fingers around his neck. “You realize that Interpol, with all its resources, has been working on breaking this ring for years? No one’s made you responsible for saving the world, Arthur. And no one should.”

He opened his mouth to protest and she lightly pressed her lips to his, swallowing it. Arthur stiffened and she backed off, but then he made an aborted dive for her mouth. Which she turned into a successful meeting, finally letting her weight fall against him. His hands slid onto her back before diverging paths, one climbing to her hair and the other sweeping over her skirt to—

\--phone ringing. Asshole talking. “Whoa. Cobham just got to keep her five bucks.”

Arthur made a frantic attempt to answer the phone and what was undoubtedly his obnoxious grad student at the same time. “Galahad—Tristan. Do you—oh, good. And you—” directed at Galahad “—are all right? Good.”

Guinevere resisted the urge to slap that admiring stare out of Galahad’s face and made herself turn back to the desk. She absently combed her hair back in place while she tried to figure out how they were one, going to take down the Red Hounds fast, and two, going to keep Arthur alive.

Something rough and warm touched her hand. When she looked over, Arthur had already wrapped his fingers around her palm where it rested on the glass table. He was still conducting two conversations at once, but he staggered a little when she gleefully leaned in to peck him behind the ear. Perfect mix of adorable git and cool professional.

* * *

Lancelot was still blinking at the scene of his double carjacking when a big black boat of a car crept up beside him. It was about ten years too old, but had been restored to look like the shadow that lurked in the alley just beyond, so fuck off before someone gets hurt, thank you.

The window rolled down, and an amused man hung out of it. “Lancelot DuLac?”

“Why?” His cell had dropped out somewhere, but he still had his gun. As he turned to face the car, he casually folded his arms over his chest in order to get to that.

The man nodded at his hand. “You don’t need that. I’m Tristan. Arthur sent me to pick you up.”

“Tristan?” That name rang a bell…right, Arthur’s pseudo-adopted son. Which could be a lie, given the car that had tailed Lancelot on his way to the address Cowden had handed him. And that car had run him off the road, so he wasn’t currently inclined to be trusting.

Some of his thoughts must have showed on his face. It was a more believable explanation than the one that said Tristan was an eerie mindreading crazy, however appealing that one was to Lancelot’s irrational side. “Someone followed you and shoved you off the road, then tried to drag you into their car. They went about a block before a gang shot out their wheels and hijacked them, leaving you on the sidewalk.”

“And how would you know that?” If Tristan would just get rid of that vague, grating smile, Lancelot might be more inclined to trust him.

“The gang owed me a few favors. Now please get in. Arthur’s having a bad day, and I don’t really want to see him snap. It’s not pretty.” Tristan ducked back in the car, and a second later, the back passenger door opened. “And it’s a pain talking him down afterward.”

He was weird, but he didn’t seem to be trying to fool Lancelot. On the contrary, he seemed to be finding it fucking hilarious how much he was rubbing Lancelot the wrong way, which made it unlikely he was lying in order to lure Lancelot into more suit-scuffing annoyances. Therefore Lancelot got into the car, but he wasn’t happy about it. If he’d seen a single taxi, he would’ve taken it instead, but this neighborhood was tellingly devoid of those.

As it turned out, there was a second man taking up the front passenger seat, who introduced himself as Gawain once they’d started off. Lancelot recognized the voice from last night and finally began to relax, certain that he was out of danger. 

“I’m one of Arthur’s grad students. You’re…hey, are you the—ah—I mean—” Gawain suddenly stammered in the middle of his sentence, going pinkish.

A tiny sigh escaped from Tristan. “He wants to know if you were the one screwing Arthur yesterday.”

“Oh. Yeah, that would be me.” Giving them a quick grin, Lancelot slouched down and started investigating his various aches. He had a few big rips in his trousers and coat and some scrapes that were deep enough to have bled through his clothes, so that was one bloody expensive suit down the drain. Nothing immobilizing: the worst was a large bruise on his jaw where they’d swung for his temple, trying to knock him out, and missed.

Well, no, the worst was having to be rescued by a bunch of street punks. Plus it was clear he was more out of the loop than some grad student who had pine needles in his hair and drove a car that could probably take an SUV and eat it for lunch. “Why would Arthur snap? And why the hell did I just get dumped on the sidewalk?”

“Because if you hadn’t been, you’d probably be dead.” Tristan hit a main road and without warning switched into composed kamikaze mode, breaking every traffic law Lancelot knew of in addition to a few laws of physics. Gawain yelped and banged out of the sight, probably to brace himself in the footspace, Lancelot hung onto the strap above the window, and Tristan just kept talking. His voice didn’t even waver like it should’ve, what with all the insane maneuvers. “The ex-paramilitary group you’ve been chasing is called the Red Hounds. Arthur and my mother were both members; she was killed and he left and took care of me. So did some other members, but I think he might now be the only ex-Red Hound still alive. The group assumed he betrayed them and is trying to kill him. And you and your partner, since they think he’s working with you.”

Swerve around a truck. When Lancelot had steadied himself enough to see Tristan’s head again, the other man was just finishing up a phone call.

“Arthur’s never really forgiven himself for not stopping them,” Tristan added. His dry irony briefly went away to be replaced by a kind of irritated sympathy. “And he was one of their best.”

What the man was saying didn’t accord at all with what Lancelot had seen—or maybe it did. Arthur had generally acted like a neurotic fish out of water—albeit a pretty one—but it could be possible that the water hadn’t always been the university. There’d been moments when Arthur had shown a harder edge, like how he’d handled Guinevere’s attempted interrogation this morning…and his expression when he’d seen Cowden. Who definitely had a stink around him.

And then there was Tristan, who might’ve been already seventeen when Arthur had taken him in, but that still left some time for influence to be applied. As much as he got on Lancelot’s nerves, he hadn’t gotten his unbreakable composure and calm way of handling both rescue effort and hurtling car from some humanities professor. He’d had practice at this, and recently, which meant that Arthur was a decent teacher of street skills as well.

The car screeched over a curb and lurched back down just in time for some cyclist’s terrified face to whisk by Lancelot’s window. He felt his stomach try to climb his throat and firmly shoved it down. “Huh. Hard to guess that just on meeting him. So what more current events did I miss?”

“Gawain and I caught three men waiting in Arthur’s house. Hold on.” Tristan whirled the wheel and sent them skidding into a side-alley, which turned out to be a nice way of cutting past the dinner-hour traffic. Lancelot gritted his teeth and took a few mental notes, since he could use it.

Gawain, or the part of him that jounced into view, was beginning to look a little ill. “Galahad—Arthur’s other grad student—took them up to Interpol. Which is where we’re going, too.”

And which belatedly reminded Lancelot of the other agent that had gotten sent off—with Cowden. “Shit! Guin!”

“Oh, she’s fine. She’s waiting with Arthur; he broke out of Interpol long enough to take down the two going after her—no, he knocked out one and she shot the other in the head. Cowden.” The tone of Tristan’s voice was decidedly satisfied; when Gawain’s face next swung into view, he was eying the other man with some wariness. Tristan glanced over, his smile saying that he was happy and that was what he was.

“Maybe I should choose the coffee place…” Gawain muttered.

How cute. They were flirting. And Lancelot was slightly dizzy, and the car wouldn’t stop jerking long enough for him to figure out whether that was from Tristan’s driving or from Arthur _breaking out of Interpol_. Saving Guin.

On the one hand, he was relieved she was all right, since if she weren’t, he’d have lost the only partner, however annoying, that had ever been able to keep up with him. It was also good news to hear that Arthur wasn’t totally defenseless, but on the contrary was very, very capable. Intriguing to imagine—right, not the time. Also not the time to wonder why he’d gone after her and not Lancelot.

“She was closer, and from what I remember, Cowden was one of the more psychotic of them.” Tristan met Lancelot’s eyes in the rearview mirror and just barely avoided looking smug.

“Does he always do this?” Lancelot sat up a little straighter, then ran his fingers through his hair so it wasn’t so damn poufy. If Guin took that the way he thought she would, a bit of sprucing up was justifiable.

A hand clamped down on the front passenger seat’s headrest. Gawain yanked himself into view long enough to shrug. “Looks like it. Cool, isn’t it?”

“If that’s your taste,” Lancelot snorted. He slammed his heel into the floor just in time to avoid being slammed into the back of Tristan’s seat. When he rocked back into his seat, he saw that they’d arrived.

* * *

The ground was more steady under Arthur’s feet. It helped that the Interpol office was well-lit and full of people bustling in busy but orderly fashion, which called to Arthur’s structured tendencies and helped bolster them against his anger. That was still seething deep inside, but now he thought he could control it.

At the very least, he knew it was possible to snap out of it, and to do so without causing more pain to others. Guinevere had shown him that.

For a moment, Arthur slumped in his seat and stared ahead of him, mulling on that thought. Then he tilted his head back and banged it a few times against the headrest. “God, I’m an idiot.”

“If you’re calling yourself one for the Red Hound issue, I may have to slap you.” A weight suddenly settled on Arthur’s knee, warm and yielding soft pressure. Guinevere put a hand on his other knee for support and began typing at the computer on the desk. She murmured at the screen and shifted her position. Specifically, the location of her hand. “If, however, you’re calling yourself that for not having a…more creative way of looking at the world, then by all means, do.”

Arthur found his fingers suddenly locked around the chairarms and his feet braced hard against the floor. When he spoke, his voice cracked in ways it hadn’t since puberty. “Guinevere. That is not the mouse.”

“I’d hope not. I don’t do small…in any application of the word.” Her tone had modulated to rich and vixen, and her twist out of his lap to kneel on the floor was as smooth as her hand was vigorous. It was slightly embarrassing how fast she and Lancelot both managed to get the better of Arthur.

Lancelot—and they hadn’t settled that. “Ah…Guin—oh, God.”

Well, so much for his attempt to rise. And his legs were more mush than bone and muscle now, so Arthur very much doubted the success of a second try. Nevertheless, he couldn’t in good—Christ, that was good—good conscience just lie back and enjoy it. Even if her fingers had teased down his zipper and she was running her very, very pink tongue over very, very red lips.

The chairarms were a godsend, though they suffered for it under Arthur’s grip. “Guinevere, about—you and Lancelot have something going, and—”

“He fucked you, so I’d say he wasn’t too worried about that.” Tongue-flick just over his head; Arthur threw a panicked look at the slightly-ajar door and Guinevere promptly, incredibly swallowed all of him down. Her throat squeezed so his bones went from mush to liquid, and then she was off. It’d taken maybe five seconds, which had been long enough for civilizations to rise and fall without Arthur noticing. “And I’d like to fuck you, too. So I’d say I wasn’t too worried about it. Funny how you worry about things that no one else bothers with.”

“But I’m not—” Arthur’s knees solidified long enough for him to rise and put his hands on the desk, preparatory for standing. Unfortunately for his intentions, right about then Guinevere took him all the way in again. This time, she took her time working him with mouth and tongue and a slight flutter of teeth while he staggered, grabbed the edge of the desk and awkwardly splayed his legs in an effort not to fall on her.

Good thing the door and the one glass wall of the office was thickly frosted, he thought. Then he remembered that he wasn’t supposed to be happy about that because he needed to be concentrating on other matters. Like the men trying to kill him, and like the still-alive possibility that he’d be included in any charges brought against the Red Hounds. Which led to his worries about Tristan and his grad students now being involved, when the last thing they should’ve had to be concerned about was—

\--his thoughts were beginning to sound rather frantic. It matched the movements of his hips: jerky, disconnected. When they did follow a rhythm, it was Guinevere’s and not his. She’d lifted her hands to wrap around his thighs, stroking and petting them in time with her mouth.

“Guinevere, I really think—”

That annoyed her. Enough for her to make a disgruntled sound deep in her throat, which traveled up through Arthur to shake him loose and make him scramble for a new grip on the desk. He tried to warn her, but all that came out was an incoherent choking; she still seemed to understand and deliberately tightened her hold on him so he had to come in her mouth.

Arthur went down on one elbow, bent over the desk so far his forehead almost touched the glass—which his panting was fogging up. Beside him, Guinevere daintily rose and perched on the edge, licking at her lips. Her lipstick hadn’t even smudged, but she whipped out a compact to check anyway.

“Arthur, I think you should realize that our advances aside, neither Lancelot nor I are the kind to throw away our careers for a simple fuck. Well, I’m not—he might, but still, he’d need to think about it first.” She muttered something about the only time he bothered thinking was when it involved himself, then snapped shut the compact. “We’re not going to arrest you. We are going to arrest everyone else, but the _real_ MI6 man gave us information exonerating you. And I, for one, wouldn’t still be flirting with you if I didn’t want to be around to see a version of you that wasn’t murderous or just-fucked.”

“Lancelot?” Arthur gasped. He hastily redid his trousers and stood, just in time for Guinevere to haul him down by the tie and thoroughly kiss him.

“I have to put up with him anyway,” she muttered. “Anyway, could you choose right now? Of course not. You’ve known us for all of two days; that’s not enough time for an informed decision.”

Oh. Yes. Dating. For some reason, the thought of that as applied to Lancelot and Guinevere sent a shiver of terror through Arthur. It was an irrational feeling and he therefore ignored it…although he couldn’t quite ignore the urge to muss Guinevere’s lipstick just a little. Possibly he was annoyed at them beneath all his confused, nervous objections. After all—she tasted like caramel. And he was beginning to get used to her clawing at his shirt and shoulders.

Someone knocked and they hurriedly slid apart. This time, Guinevere was considerably more disheveled, and her stalk over to the door was a bit off-balance.

“Hello—Guin. I hear you’ve been busy.” Lancelot’s voice. Dry, pointed, and quietly irked.

“To better effect than you, I believe,” she hissed, swerving out the door.

Arthur grabbed at his clothing and attempted to make himself presentable, but he still looked suspiciously rumpled when Tristan eased himself in. The other man thoughtfully looked him over, then threw a glance at Guinevere’s departing back. “You look mauled.”

“Really? I hadn’t noticed.” The sarcasm popped out before Arthur could stop it and he instantly regretted it. After all, Tristan had just done a great deal for him, and he owed the man a corresponding amount. “Sorry. I meant, thank you very much for—”

“—you’re welcome.” Tristan stepped back, gaze shifting towards a small knot of people outside. “Gawain’s got a bit of motionsickness. I’m going to get him some orange juice.”

“Please tell him thank you, too,” Arthur called after him. And then Tristan was gone and Lancelot was not, and Arthur had absolutely no idea what to say.

The other man was physically all right, though there was a nasty bruise on his jaw that made Arthur’s nails curl into his palm. His movements, however, were unimpeded by any serious injuries, and his clothes were ripped but had only a few small, already dry bloodstains. What had suffered the most seemed to be his hair, which was an unruly mess, and his attitude towards Arthur.

He came in readily enough, but his hands stayed in his pockets and he was watching Arthur on a wary slant. “So. I hear you’re somewhat more dangerous than you seem.”

“I wish I could say otherwise.” Arthur shut the door and turned so Lancelot had to either directly face him or face the wall. “Are you all right?”

“Well, the suit’s had better days, and I’ve lost my car and cell phone. But since I’m more hacked off at those bastards than in pain, I’d say I’m fine and dandy.” Lancelot stopped circling Arthur and took a step forward, then paused. His gaze wandered over Arthur’s face down the neck, finally coming to rest on Arthur’s arm. He lifted a hand, eyes shooting back to Arthur’s, and carefully touched an old bullet-scar. A corner of his mouth quirked. “I thought so. And some of those other ones didn’t look like barfight souvenirs to me…but I just had a hard time picturing you in a barfight, let alone a paramilitary group.”

Then he was flush against Arthur’s chest and his mouth was hot and soft on Arthur’s, his arm going around Arthur’s neck. They traded a few breaths before Arthur came to his senses and pulled Lancelot off enough for speech. “I’m a teacher. I’m a killer. I live with both of those men—I am both of those men, and neither of them is going to go away, it seems.”

The fingers around the back of Arthur’s neck curled, moved their tips in teasing circles as light as the chuckling breath grazing his face. “I don’t think I was fucking half a man last night. And Guin and I are…a little more active than the normal Interpol agent, so you wouldn’t be the only one with a gun under their pillow.”

“That’s the other thing. I…I like both of you very much.” Stupid way to put it, but Lancelot was licking heat into Arthur’s jaw and that made subtlety rather difficult. “And I—don’t want to hurt--” exasperation made the final slice across Arthur’s stretched patience “—would you two stop trying to distract me?”

Lancelot ignored Arthur and stared instead from one of his wrists to the other, which were pinned to the wall. He blinked, nodded approvingly and then _writhed_ in Arthur’s grip, sinuous and mesmerizing. Lifted his chin so he was both challenging and offering his throat. “Where’s the downside in that?”

“Arthur, Lancelot—oh.” Guinevere rocked back on her heel and folded her arms over her chest, watching them spring away—well, Arthur sprang and Lancelot leisurely followed, rubbing pointedly at his wrists. She seemed torn between amusement and dagger-pointed aggravation, which was mainly focused on Lancelot. “I see you’ve gotten a glimpse of his _other_ professionalism. I hope you enjoyed it; Pellew wants to hear the plan now, and I doubt he’d take a porn-script.”

Sarcasm was perfectly embodied in Lancelot’s arched eyebrow and languid reply. “Guin’s a nasty girl with nice claws, as you can see. If we can still manage to share an apartment, I think we can handle anything you throw at us.”

A thousand valid objections rose in Arthur’s throat, but he swallowed them. He could still taste Lancelot and Guinevere in his mouth, and suddenly he thought he wanted that taste to linger.

* * *

“As you’ve asked, your house has been staked out and men are in position to seize whatever intruders happen to show up,” stated the Interpol man in rolling rich tones. Combined with his ultra-serious expression, he reminded Galahad a lot of those captains in old sea films, who were always making great speeches in the middle of huge smoky battles when they should’ve been ducking.

Someone kicked his foot. “Don’t you fucking flick that pen at him,” Gawain hissed. “And sit up straight.”

Oh, for God’s sake—Galahad hadn’t even been thinking about that. Much. Not seriously, since he’d only managed to steal one pen and he wouldn’t have anything to fiddle with if he threw it. And fiddling was about the only thing keeping him from falling asle—hello, busty blonde walking past. She gave him a once-over and he shot her a quick smile before reluctantly turning back to the war council.

“Due to what’s happened, the FBI has moved in and seized most of the Red Hounds. The ones still at large, however, seem to be the leadership elements.” Interpol guy handed Arthur a stack of photos, which he quickly shuffled through before passing them on to the others. “Cerdic, for one. Are you certain he’ll be coming for you? It would make more sense for him to be working on getting safely out of the country…”

“Yes.” Arthur didn’t waste any time in wavering on that, at least. He sounded as certain about that as he did when standing his ground in an ideological debate. “One, Cerdic is…old-fashioned, in a sense. He won’t let what he perceives as my betrayal stand.” 

On second thought, the way Arthur faltered on the word ‘betrayal’ was a bit worrying, and not only to Galahad: those two other agents both shot him searching looks, and even Tristan shifted a bit as he noted it. As good as the man was, he was still receiving more attention than Galahad thought that his behavior warranted. He had one gorgeous woman doing everything but grabbing his ass and one man even Galahad’s disinterested eye said was equally good-looking leaning far too close on his other side, and he still managed to be nagging himself about the distant past.

Actually, scratch the ‘everything but grabbing his ass’ part. Galahad slouched so he could snicker without drawing glares to himself. In front of him, Arthur hiccupped in the middle of a sentence. “Two, I took a lot of money when I—ai!—left. Later I sent it to the families of the dead MI6 operatives, but he probably assumes I still have it. And he’d need that, since you said you’ve cut off his other sources of cash.”

The Interpol man bent a severe look on Arthur’s sudden flush, but restrained himself from asking the obvious question. Well, if he was Lancelot and Guinevere’s boss, he should already know the answer; it’d taken Galahad about five minutes of watching those two around Arthur to figure out things, and usually Gawain was the one who paid attention to things like that.

“True. We’ve been trying to get permission for a while and the attacks on our agents gave us a reason that couldn’t be argued with,” Interpol guy said. He stared down at the papers strewn across his desk for a bit longer, then briskly shuffled them out of the way and looked up. “Well, I believe you’ve settled all outstanding matters except two. Your statuette and where you’re going to stay tonight.”

“Statuette?” Galahad asked. He’d caught up to speed on nearly all the story, thanks to Tristan’s creepy omniscience, but he didn’t remember anything about artwork.

Arthur pulled out a photo and held it up so Galahad could see: a small, ugly blob-thing was featured in it. “The Hounds’ first operation took place near some ruins. We found a set of statues and each of us took one, as a reminder to be loyal. But I don’t have mine; after I left the group, I found myself feeling so sick whenever I saw it that I just dumped it.”

That made Interpol man frown and produce some prodigious forehead furrows. “Those statuettes are part of the cultural heritage of that country. We’d like to return the whole set, if possible.”

Regret made a reappearance on Arthur’s face—and down below, he intercepted a hand sneaking onto his hip. “I wish I could help with that—”

“I’d need till tomorrow,” Tristan interrupted. When Arthur twisted around to stare in surprise, he shrugged and stood up. Gawain hastily followed, and handed Tristan his coat so he could tug on the worn, faded near-rag. “You told me that if something’s that important, it’s a bad idea to throw it away because it’ll probably be needed later, if not wanted.”

“I was talking about your mother’s notebook,” Arthur muttered. Funny how he was unhappy that someone had actually listened to him and followed his advice. “So you’ve got it?”

Tristan shook his head, sending his hair into his face. Beside him, Gawain’s hands twitched up, then held themselves back. “No. It’s in Avalon’s Attic. But I can get it tonight, and if you want, you can use my place while I’m out. But the plumbing’s being a little spotty.”

“It’d probably be better if you were somewhere Interpol could keep an eye on you,” Lancelot hastily said. He laid a couple fingers on Arthur’s arm and, when the other man turned, smiled like a pretty girl trying to guilt her boyfriend into moving the fridge. Arthur’s reaction was somewhere between bemused and succumbing.

“And our plumbing works,” Guinevere added, nearly cooing at Arthur. Behind her, her boss was first startled, then understanding, and finally eye-rolling at the antics of his agents.

Gawain ducked his head as if to muffle a cough. “Man, they’re trying hard.”

“But this is a good thing, right? If he’s getting some, he’ll be more likely to be easy on us.” Galahad sneaked a look at Tristan to see how he was taking it, but of course he was just plain amused. It was probably easier to list all the things that _didn’t_ amuse Tristan than to list what did.

“I’d recommend you stay somewhere you can contact us if you run into trouble,” Interpol man finally said. He gave them all a brisk nod, tossed Lancelot and Guinevere a final set of odd looks, and strode out of the room.

Done with his coat, Tristan handed Arthur a briefcase before heading for the door. “I thought you might want your work. See you tomorrow morning.”

“Tristan?” Somehow Arthur dragged his eyes from the importuning pair before him and got his brain thinking. “Thank you. You didn’t need to help.”

“They killed my mother, and they’re hunting you. Of course I do.” Tristan raised his hand in a curt wave, then brought it down to pull on Gawain’s shoulder. After a brief moment of confusion, Gawain went along with him.

And so did Galahad, though when Tristan saw him, annoyance definitely crossed his face. “You can go home, you know.”

“So you two can make out madly. Yeah, well, you can still do that when I’m not looking. But I’ve gotten into this mess this far, and I want to see this statue.” Not to mention Galahad didn’t have any dates for the night, and he wasn’t inclined to catch up on his grading. He was going to be alternating between boredom and worry if he let Gawain go off with Avalon’s resident weirdo. Plus he’d been hearing about the Attic for weeks, and his curiosity about the historical-artifact storage facility was running high.

“Just let him come. Trust me, it’s easier than fending him off,” Gawain said, throwing Galahad an uncomplimentary look. “We can use him to keep Dagonet busy.”

Galahad smacked him for that, and then quickly jogged ahead to avoid getting a beating. To no point, since something small and pointy and painful jabbed him in the back of the head. A pen.

When he turned around, Tristan was actually smiling. Mockingly so…and great, his roommate’s new boyfriend was a fucking bastard. All the more reason to keep tabs on him and Gawain.

* * *

“His appetite might still be down. I don’t know if spicy’s a good idea.” Tie off and sleeves rolled up, Lancelot busied himself with unloading the dishwasher. He stacked up all the bowls, waited for Guin to pass him and then pivoted out from between the lowered dishwasher front and her back. The bowls rattled, but he didn’t lose any before he could start shoving them in the cabinet.

Guin had pinned her hair back and was browning onions in a pan. “No, that’s you when you’re hungover. He seemed to have plenty of appetite to me.” She stepped back long enough to kick at the fridge. “Go chop the scallions when you’re done with that.”

Lancelot rolled his eyes, but did as he was told. He had to pause when one of his bandages got yanked half-off—took all the hair on that part of his arm with it—and so he nearly backed into Guin as she went for the meat. “You’re in no position to be smug.”

“Why not? Because technically we’re not supposed to be competing anymore? Or because you snowballed him into bed before I did?” She sneaked in an elbow and was at the stove before he could retaliate. “Thanks a lot for that, by the way. Not only did you delay the case, but you also reinforced his skittish tendencies.”

The thud of the knife was a nice, hard rhythm that matched Lancelot’s thoughts. Plus the scallions were lanky and skinny, echoing another shape in the kitchen. “Because I was out of the goddamn loop on a few certain—”

Polite cough. Arthur had finally gotten rid of his coat and tie, and he’d unbuttoned cuffs and top of collar as well. It was a good thing Lancelot had stopped chopping before he’d looked, or he might’ve lost a fingertip. “Ah…do you have any red pens? Mine’s out of ink.”

“You swear you saw him knock out that guy?” Lancelot asked under his breath.

Guin nodded. Which Lancelot had to see out of his peripheral vision, since neither of them were going to bother looking at each other. “Wanted so badly to have him on the car, but he was too jumpy.” She raised her voice to answer Arthur’s question so he’d stop being so…apologetic. “There’s some in the second drawer of my desk—that’s the one with the bamboo shoot. Lancelot’s is the one with the gigantic coffee stain.”

“Thanks.” Arthur ducked out of the kitchen and thus left Lancelot with no reason not to eviscerate that bitch.

“Not competing, are we? You’ve got a funny definition of that.” He finished chopping her stupid scallions with an angry flourish that flipped a couple onto the floor. That made her curse and snarl at him, but he just wiped off the knife and put it away. A little food on the floor never hurt anyone; if she wanted it off, she could pick them up herself.

She flounced past him to grab the vegetables and sent them flying into the pan so hard one of the little green circles bounced back out. Hypocrite. “For once in your life, could you not be a complete prick? In case you haven’t noticed, Arthur has issues. He’s got enough guilt to found his own religion and he’s obviously spent a lot of time denying himself things so he wouldn’t attract attention. The last thing he needs is for you to come barging in and—”

“Well, it seemed to work all last night,” Lancelot purred, reaching past her to slam on the pan lid. Time for the food to simmer.

And time for Guinevere to explode and smack him precisely on his bruised jaw.

About two seconds later, Lancelot was banging his knees on the tile and the hellcat beneath him was doing her best to rip into his lip and to whack them into the refrigerator. He yanked her skirt off and shoved his palm between her legs, ground down and laughed when she couldn’t help but squirm into it. But then she had her hand in his hair and was wrenching them over with little more than that, was savaging his neck so his head lolled back and—

\--Arthur looked even more embarrassed when viewed upside-down. “Oh, sorry. I thought—there was a lot of noise, and—”

Guin just swiped out a hand and knocked him over, which was about the smartest thing she’d done all day. Lancelot gave her a soft kiss in appreciation, then pushed her down so he could crawl first onto Arthur. He tugged off one shoe and sock. “No, we’re fine. We’re adults, you know. You don’t have to worry about us all the time.”

Arthur was bug-eyed, and he kept flailing behind him for a grip in order to pull away. “I just don’t want to see anyone hurt. Especially you.”

“I am not in pain, I assure you.” A thudding behind Lancelot signaled that Guin had gotten to Arthur’s other shoe and sock, so he reached for Arthur’s belt and whipped that out of the way. It flew over the island and, to judge by the clatter, landed somewhere in the sink. Then he grabbed for Arthur’s hip and hauled himself another foot.

“But—” the flailing stopped, but Arthur still had his hands on the floor and not on Lancelot “—the food!”

“Oh, bugger it.” Rustling noises and then clicking as Guin turned down the stove heat. “We’ll just make it quick, then. Before it burns.”

By now, Lancelot was sliding himself up Arthur’s chest, and there was finally a hand running through his hair. But stubborn man, Arthur was still using his other arm to hold Lancelot off. “I have—papers to grade—”

“You’ve got me climbing on you and—” quick check behind “—Guin in a naughty lace bra. They can fucking wait, Arthur.” After another blocked dive for Arthur’s mouth, Lancelot added, “Six years between lays is a long while. The faster you start making them up, the better.”

In retrospect, he should’ve been able to predict that every man capable of functioning within society still had some level of pride. And given Arthur’s peculiar guilt, he probably had some weird code of personal honor he felt it was necessary to defend on top of his pride. Though it was anyone’s guess whether Lancelot would’ve refrained from commenting, given what happened next.

Actually, he didn’t know what happened next. What he did know was what happened maybe five or six steps later, when he emerged from a sudden whirling haze into breathless, moaning, helpless squirming. His hands were good and pinned against the floor and a tongue was ruthlessly taking his mouth, seizing any breath he had and then disappearing so he gasped. Waiting till he had enough air to power enough thought to miss the heat and hard pressure, and then swooping down again to keep him permanently on the edge of suffocation.

Not that he could think long enough to dislike that. He had the impression of too many hands relieving him of his pants. Then he remembered Guin and tried to lift his head to see her, but Arthur forced him down with a long, punishing kiss. Lips played along his throat that was desperately swallowing air, then came back just as he’d gotten enough breath to take. And they stayed over his when fingers flicked oil up into him—definitely Guin’s doing, though they weren’t her fingers. No, broader and rougher and they were taking Lancelot apart in a systematic, ruthless way she’d never managed the few times he’d let her try this way. She spent too much time trying to figure out the one twist or knuckle-crook that would do the most; Arthur just assumed and swamped Lancelot in those assumptions till he was whimpering into Arthur’s mouth. Rocking frantically against his leg, knee, trying to loosen the pressure and trying to seek more of it at the same time. It didn’t make sense.

But it worked, and it worked so that Lancelot didn’t know what happened between that last hard stab of the fingers and him opening his eyes to find himself slumped on the floor, and Arthur and Guinevere sitting across from him. Arthur looked about as dazed as Lancelot still felt; he had his hand up, fingers still retaining some traces of cooking oil, and he was staring at it like he’d been without it his whole life.

“He looks good like that,” Guin murmured, licking at Arthur’s ear. “I think I could put up with him if he ended up that way every time.”

Lancelot tried to hit her, but his muscles were still wrung out and it came off more like a kitten batting at some yarn.

She smacked back his hand and then climbed into Arthur’s lap, burying her face in his neck so he’d stop looking at Lancelot. Grandstanding cunt.

And it seemed that she made a similar impression on Arthur, because suddenly she was on her back and Arthur was turning her into a senseless moaning body just as thoroughly as he had Lancelot. Her hands at first tried to keep up with his mouth on her breasts, his hands on her belly and thighs, but then he lifted her hips and rocked into her, and Guin’s knees jerked into an awkward splay. She grabbed onto his shoulders and couldn’t let go until her climax had melted her into the tiles.

“You look good like that,” Lancelot told her. “Bet we’d wreck less furniture if you spent more time in that position.”

Arthur just caught himself on his elbows, then eased down to rest his head on her breasts. “Do you two always do this when you argue?”

“Well, it wears us out before we can kill each other.” Lancelot flopped over and pressed his mouth to the point of Arthur’s shoulder. When Arthur looked over, he darted in to more thoroughly express his appreciation of the rougher spots beneath the polite professor.

“Bloody insatiable,” Arthur muttered, though he didn’t sound particularly unhappy about that. After a little more resting, he dressed himself, hauled himself up and lifted the pan lid. Then he picked up a spatula and started attending to dinner.

Guin barely repressed an irritated sigh as she wormed back into her clothes. She was up on her feet and shoving Arthur away from the stove when Lancelot was still dealing with his pants. “I’m cooking, thank you. You—”

Beeping.

“—go answer the phone.”

“Bitchy, bitchy, bitchy.” Lancelot hooked his arm through Arthur’s and dragged him out before Guin amended her order to only include Lancelot. “See, even sex doesn’t make her nicer—” picked up the phone “—hello? Sir—oh, _shit_.”

* * *

Gawain stared at the side of the building that housed the Attic. It consisted of old, irregularly-sized slabs of rock that were half-covered in ivy. Running vertically down the center was an old, rusty drainpipe. “I’ve seen this in some period film. The hero had to scale the wall, so he used the pipe, and halfway the pipe ripped off and all hell broke loose.”

“Hmm?” Tristan looked up from where he’d just picked the lock to a first-story window.

“Never mind.” There was no reason to be nervous, Gawain told himself. After all, they had the easy job; Arthur was positive Cerdic wouldn’t bother looking on the university, and anyway, Interpol had had security around campus quietly stepped up. If Tristan didn’t have 19th-century architectural plans in his head, he and Gawain and Galahad never would’ve made it in, and he swore that the only place to find those plans was inside the building into which they were currently hopping.

Well, Tristan and Gawain were hopping. Galahad got over the sill all right, but promptly banged his toe on a shelf and spit out a muffled curse. The resulting thud seemed abnormally loud—or maybe the Attic was abnormally quiet. Either way, it made Gawain flinch and duck nearly to touch his knees on the carpet.

Tristan smoothly twisted around, glowered, and turned back to calmly, soundlessly walk towards the nearest stairwell. Though the place was extremely dark, some streetlamp light made it through the window and every so often, he’d let a beam hit him. He looked good as a silhouette.

“Stop looking at his ass and hurry up,” Galahad muttered. “This place is giving me the creeps.”

“Stop talking.” The word ‘brat’ got chopped off the end of that at the last moment, and only because Gawain suspected Galahad might be feeling jealous. Not in the screwing sense—they had been covering each other’s backs and sharing bathrooms too long—but in the…attention-hungry sense.

No, that was too nasty. Then again, Galahad kept moving in front of Gawain, so maybe Gawain being sarcastic would be only fair…

They were up the stairs and just coming onto the landing when something made a noise on the floor below. A creaking, slow and hissing at the end as if a great weight was causing it. Gawain had hit the floor before he’d even realized; he started to blush and then saw that the other two had gone down as well, which made him feel better. At least he wasn’t the only one with that reflex.

“Galahad.” Tristan jerked a hand at the stairs.

Instead of going like a sensible person, Galahad made a face. ‘What?’ the arch of his eyebrows and widening of his eyes said.

Gawain shoved the annoying pest’s shoulder. “You came to help. So go help.”

“But what if it’s—”

“If it’s the boogeyman, you’re too big for it to eat now. If it’s anything else—you’ve seen worse in L. A. You’re not an idiot; think of a way to distract them.” Another second and Gawain was going to just tip Galahad over the edge. The man was agile enough to land on his feet, and it would definitely make a nice diversion.

Thankfully, that wasn’t needed. Though he was muttering nasty things about Gawain’s parentage all the way, Galahad went. Relieved, Gawain slumped and rested his forehead against the ground. Sometimes Galahad was the best possible back-up to have, and sometimes he was just a pain in the ass.

A finger lightly tapped Gawain on the arm. When he looked up, Tristan was nodding towards a shadowy row of shelves.

In all honesty, Gawain wasn’t too fond of the nighttime Attic either; the air was musty and thick, the dark seemed to be dense enough to have substance, and the cramped spaces set off every survival instinct Gawain had. But so far Tristan seemed to know what he was doing, so Gawain just held his breath and followed.

Once they were among the shelves, Tristan produced a penlight and used it to read the faded, sepia labels haphazardly organizing the place. “They had the same head librarian for sixty years—he was a complete dictator and a bit eccentric. Ordered the whole Attic according to his private system, which he never explained to anyone before he died. Been three years since and they’re still working on reordering the place.”

“But you remember where you put this statue, right?” A draft suddenly skirted the back of Gawain’s neck and he jumped forward just as Tristan pivoted to face him.

Huh. He couldn’t see Tristan’s front, except for the dim outline of nose and the glitter of eyes, but what he could feel of it was pretty nice. Gawain wondered how long he could get away with leaning into him before he became too obvious.

After he’d counted to ten, what was obvious was that Tristan didn’t care. Or he had the patience of a saint. There really was only one way to find out which it was. So Gawain leaned in and…rammed his teeth into Tristan’s cheek. Dark wasn’t romantic, he decided—it was just fucking inconvenient.

Very, very soft laughing accompanied a pair of hands moving Gawain’s jaw. “More left,” Tristan whispered, and then they finally were properly matched up.

He had a nice tongue, too. And Gawain was having stupid thoughts when he should really be using his mind for something else, like getting some support—ow. Or finding a trick around this damned blackness that had just resulted in him whacking his hands on some iron box. More careful now, he groped till he found the slope of Tristan’s shoulder. Cupped his hand around it, tried tugging and found that the changed angle helped melt his knees. Okay. Good. And Tristan didn’t seem to be averse to a hand easing onto his ass, so…

…a light shone on them. Gawain jerked around, his hand still trapped behind Tristan, to squint and silently panic. “Uh…hi. We’re students. Grad students. And we’ve got an explanation.”

Tristan casually curved his arm behind himself to grab and squeeze Gawain’s hand, which helped ground Gawain. “Dagonet?” Tristan called.

The flashlight dimmed enough for Gawain to see that yes, it was that librarian. He looked grim. Or tired. Either way, it was pretty damn intimidating.

“What are you doing here this late?”

He’d talked. In fact, Dagonet’s voice was perfectly normal down to its faint exasperation, and Gawain felt even more stupid.

“Just trying to find something for a paper,” Tristan replied. Dagonet made a sound that might have been expressing disbelief and Tristan briefly ducked his head, as if embarrassed. “This is Gawain, by the way. What are you doing here? I thought you stopped working nights after Fulcinia had your first.”

“One of Arthur’s.” Nod towards Gawain, and then Dagonet returned to his conversation with Tristan. “I did. But I had a feeling I should come down, and then Merlin called to let me know the police were stepping up security for the night.”

That was one dedicated librarian. So dedicated, in fact, that Gawain was torn on whether to be admiring or weirded out. “Oh? Well, we’ll just find what we’re looking for really quick and then go so we don’t keep you up. Sorry, but the paper kind of fell on my desk at the last minute and…yeah. Please?”

Dagonet regarded them for another long, inscrutable moment before flicking off his light. His footsteps headed for the staircase. “Fifteen minutes. And please get your friend before he knocks over another plant.”

“Too damned dark for anything, anyway,” Gawain muttered. He paused, then darted in to…fumble into Tristan’s mouth. Messy, but very nice after the first couple of seconds. “Come on. Let’s find this thing and then put Galahad to bed.”

“So we can have coffee?” Tristan squeezed Gawain’s hand one last time before turning back to the shelves. “Sounds good. Though I don’t actually like coffee, so we can skip that part.”

Gawain swallowed hard. If he was going to be stupid, at least he didn’t have to sound stupid. “Okay,” he said, voice perfectly normal.


	5. Defense and Rebuttal

The night was cooling, but it was far enough into summer so that the earth retained a comfortable degree of warmth. Tristan shrugged, rolling back his shoulders into the grass and stretching them. He paused to dig his heels into the ground, then arched further until he felt the cramps in his back begin to give. Another nice source of warmth was the stare of the man sitting next to him on the hill.

“So, Dagonet’s got some super-sense that lets him know when someone’s in his stacks?” On the other hand, Galahad’s presence fell into the dampening category. He was wandering around them, waiting for Gawain to finish prying open the box that held the statuette. And once the box was open, he would probably be waiting to hold it, and then to put it back in the box. After that, maybe he’d try and wait for morning.

“Why? Were you planning to break into them again?” If Tristan aimed right, he could put down Galahad for a few hours with the pebble beneath his head. He reached under and got it, sussing out the rough spots with his thumb. Chances were it wouldn’t cause any permanent damage: too small, too smooth.

Galahad stopped his incessant pacing long enough to glare. In the dim light cast by the streetlamps below, he looked orange-y and about twelve.

“Hey, he’s my roommate. Don’t throw that.” The last word Gawain said was almost cut off by his grunt and the loud whine of rusted hinges. He deposited the opened box in front of all of them, gave it a satisfied look, and then parceled out an annoyed look to both Tristan and Galahad. “And Galahad, don’t even think of bringing a date into the library. That’s just too…too…my God, you’ve got a bed. Can’t you use that?”

“Then I’d be washing the sheets every day,” Galahad complained, plopping down. He leaned over the box, then grabbed for the big flashlight Tristan kept in his car. “Can’t see—whoa. Damn, that’s ugly.”

Tristan didn’t need to look, given that he had every curve and jag of the thing permanently engraved in his memory. So when Gawain twisted the box towards him, he tilted his head back to look at the sky. “My mother had one. I remember it.”

“What happened to that one?” Gawain asked.

It might’ve been easier if that question had come from Galahad, because then Tristan could be as nasty as he wanted in his reply. As it was, he was glad there were tufts of grass he could quietly jerk. “When Cerdic killed her, he took it. That’s how they kept track of members. The statues.”

Awkward, long silence. Several times Gawain started to say something, but he always cut himself off before he became intelligible.

 _Snap_. Galahad shut the box and tucked it under one arm. He stood up to look down on them, which put his expression in the shadows where it couldn’t be read. Then he sighed, irritated and suffering as if he were some old man struggling with a war wound. Though the rude gesture he flicked Gawain’s way was lively enough in its nonchalance; he seemed to mean it more as a signature farewell than as a genuine insult. “I’m going to go take this home. When we hop over to Arthur’s tomorrow, I’ll bring it.”

Gawain quickly sat up to stare after the other man. “What’ll you be doing between now and then?”

“Using my bed,” Galahad called back, already halfway down the hill. “You’re not coming home tonight, so I don’t need to worry about interruptions, anyway.”

“I’m not—God, sometimes I just want to smack him into the mud for being such a—a—”

It was about time Tristan stopped brooding and paid attention to the present, he thought. He was alive and living a good life, and he ought to enjoy that. So he rolled over on top of Gawain and stole a kiss while the other man was still trying to babble. Then he leaned back and folded his arms over Gawain’s chest, trying not to smile at the shocked look on Gawain’s face. “For being such an arrogant, presumptuous bastard?”

Half an agreement slipped out of Gawain’s mouth before he stopped himself, thinking. After a moment, he came to his conclusion and buried his hands in Tristan’s hair, yanking Tristan down for a longer, wetter kiss that soon segued into nuzzling at Tristan’s neck and tugging at his clothes. “Well, he does have his good points.”

Tristan supposed that was true. At least Galahad was capable of getting the point, even if it took him a frustratingly long time to act on it. Or to be shoved into acting on it in the desired fashion. “You didn’t offend me.”

“What?” Gawain stopped to puzzle over that, which gave Tristan a chance to swipe broad, hard licks beneath Gawain’s collar. “Oh, that…” Gawain groaned. “You’re…okay, right? You said so before.”

“More or less. She’s dead, but she didn’t die in vain. And her ghost is well-fed on the blood of her assassins.” The body beneath Tristan’s mouth momentarily stiffened and he gently bit at it. Then he squirmed up to catch Gawain’s lower lip between his teeth and tug not quite as gently at it.

There wasn’t any warning. One moment, Gawain was beneath and the next he was above, grinning uncertainly while his hands busily petted Tristan’s shirt up his chest. He ducked to kiss Tristan on the mouth, brow, mouth. “Quoting, right? Movie?”

“Yes. Though I agree with the sentiment.” When he was using his mind to think, Tristan silently amended. At the moment, he was slightly more preoccupied with using his mind to will his arms over his head so he could get off his shirt. The task was made slightly more difficult by the reluctance of Tristan’s hands to move without tracing out the flex of Gawain’s muscles beneath his button-down, or to tangle in Gawain’s hair.

After another short freeze, Gawain shrugged and nibbled his way from Tristan’s jaw into the crook of Tristan’s neck, where he proceeded to make a good quarter of Tristan’s neurons burst. “Can’t really say as I can blame you. So—um—on the grass?”

“You want a bed?” Tristan humped up—had to pause because he’d shoved their pricks together and even through their jeans, the friction was enough to disrupt his thoughts—and hooked his hands in Gawain’s waistband. He tugged, was faintly surprised when it wouldn’t slide and then remembered. 

His fingers slipped a few times getting the other man’s fly open, but Gawain didn’t seem to mind too badly. Not at all, to judge by the way Gawain was suddenly ripping at Tristan’s shirt. “Uh. No. But…no, you’re here, so you can’t drop shoes on my head…”

Laughing, Tristan rolled them over a third time and sat up so he could get down their pants. Then he laid back down on Gawain to press his grins and groans into a sweaty throat. Hands ran down his spine, grazing tremors out with sandpaper calluses and surprisingly silky inside of wrists. Curved down around his thighs and lifted him up, realigning their cocks. He arched and let a shudder burn him twisted, let his cock slip down by Gawain’s into the hot crease where Gawain’s leg joined his body.

After a moment, Gawain got it and slid one palm up between Tristan’s shoulder, pushing them together. He hooked his leg around the backs of Tristan’s knees and jerked up his hips so their abrupt, frayed gasps were matched.

“Fuck.” In the dark, the glitter of Gawain’s eyes was almost drowned out by the gleam of the sweat on his face.

Tristan licked up some of it, felt the difference when his tongue moved from clean-shaven parts to beard. He bent down and rubbed his cheek against it, then decided he liked that rasping. “That’s later. Don’t have anything here.”

Gawain’s eyes went wide, sucking in what little light there was. Then his hand was between them and working both pricks, and his mouth was a hungry brand on Tristan’s jaw, shoulder, chest. Two of his fingers raked up Tristan’s side, caught a nipple and twisted it just at Tristan’s hips seemed to melt into a final buck.

Lazy now, feeling the aftershocks lace themselves sweet and jagged-edged through his nerves, Tristan went boneless while Gawain pressed himself a few last times against Tristan’s leg. Then the other man came, hoarse shout trying to stifle itself, eyes squeezed hard shut, hands clenching in the grass so he wouldn’t fall on Tristan.

“That…that was nice. I mean, really, really good…oh, fuck it.” Rag-doll floppy, Gawain came down and messily brushed his lips over Tristan’s. “What are you doing tomorrow?”

“Depends. If Arthur’s all right, I might go to a movie. There’s a midnight special—double thriller feature.” Tristan turned his head to suck at Gawain’s knuckles, tasting the fresh pungent grass stains on them.

A chuckle nestled itself against the side of his head. “Want to let me get the popcorn?” Gawain asked.

“All right,” Tristan murmured, wrapping his arms around the other man.

* * *

The wrist beneath Arthur’s right hand unexpectedly relaxed; his instincts fired just in time for him to slap the other wrist down, then tighten his grip on the first one before it twisted loose. He sucked in a deep breath—

Lancelot abruptly threw his whole body into a violent twist that nearly sent Arthur off of him, and it was only after Arthur had wasted more than that one breath that he got the other man’s legs still. “What’s going on?”

“Nothing.” In a blink, Lancelot was supple and yielding, an invitation to debauchery as he peered up at Arthur, eyes half-closed. “Unless you’d like to start something…”

Arthur closed his eyes and dredged up the remains of his patience. He was annoyed at Lancelot. But he also, apparently, cared a good deal for him and wanted him in one piece for frenetic screwing—for wit and companionship and yes, compatibility in bed. So no strangling. “You cursed at your director. And then you went quiet and said nothing but ‘yes’ and ‘no’ for three and a half-minutes. What. Happened?”

“Funny. I was about to ask the same question.” Guinevere stood hipshot in the doorway, garbed in wrinkled blouse and skirt and a huge kitchen mitt. When she caught Arthur staring at it, she grimaced and yanked it off. After staring at it for a second, she threw it at him.

Actually, she threw it so it should’ve gone slightly to the left of his ear, but by the time Arthur realized that, he’d already ducked and thus let Lancelot scramble free. The other man clawed forward, twisted around long enough to say, “Really, everything’s fine,” and then dove for Guinevere’s waist. He dragged her back into the kitchen, and the last thing Arthur saw before the door slammed shut was Guinevere’s outraged face and her smack at Lancelot.

Still catching his breath, Arthur stared at the door. Something flapped against his legs and he looked down to see his shirttails moving in a draft.

Behind the kitchen came muffled, raised voices that crested fast and sharp before descending into inaudible murmurs.

Well, he wouldn’t find out anything just sitting here. Arthur tucked in his shirt and then went about the apartment, searching for the draft. After a little searching, he tracked it down to a window someone had cracked open for air. He put his hands on it to close it, then paused.

He could go out. The roof was an easy climb to make, and then he could go down the staircase to the elevator. A car might be trickier to find—or he could just catch a taxi to a part of town with ones easier to break into and hotwire. And then…where would he go? If he showed up at his house, he might be arriving in the middle of a seize-and-arrest operation, or worse, and he’d have no way of learning.

Not to mention he had a feeling that that would do more than offend Lancelot and Guinevere. They seemed very insistent on helping him, and Guinevere in particular didn’t take any kind of refusal well.

On the other hand, their desire to keep him safe was making him itch with the lack of anything to do. Somewhere out there, Cerdic was facing his last gasp, and Arthur wasn’t there to see for himself that the man didn’t turn cornered bear, didn’t rampage through to shadow another six years of Arthur’s life.

“But I’m a civilian,” Arthur reminded himself. It was in the hands of the authorities, and he should leave it to them. He’d given them all the information they’d need, and he should trust in them to use it wisely and well.

The window shut, Arthur leaned on the sill for another few seconds. Outside, the moon could be seen only by its reflection in the tall, mirror-glass skyscraper across the road. Thin clouds occasionally straggled across it, but it always burned through them to stand out round and brilliant. It was very like the night everything had gone to hell.

But it wasn’t the same. So Arthur made himself step away from the window, and once away, he didn’t kneel by the sofa to find the guns he suspected were hidden there. Instead, he picked up his bag and went into the bathroom.

Two pages into his third paper, someone tried the doorknob. When they discovered it was locked from the inside, they dropped two curt knocks on the door.

“I’m grading,” Arthur called. It was a spacious room, but the bathtub still wasn’t big enough to accommodate his legs, so he was forced to awkwardly curl. He scooted up his knee and repositioned the paper he was reading on it, then scribbled a comment in the margin.

“Arthur, dinner’s ready. I thought you said you were hungry,” Guinevere wheedled. She knocked again. “Come on. It’s getting cold and I spent forever on it.”

Faint snort-like sound. “Great, guilt him out of there,” came Lancelot’s disgruntled mutter. “That’s going to really cut the legs out from under his bad habits.”

Then he yelped and the door rattled as if someone had just stumbled into it. “Shut up, you jackass git. You shouldn’t have shoved him out of the kitchen like that. Only an idiot wouldn’t realize something was wrong from the way you’ve been acting,” Guinevere snapped.

Arthur looked at the comment that he’d just had to rewrite three times, due to being distracted by eavesdropping on their bickering. Then he looked at the thick stack of papers to be graded, which were all nestled in his briefcase. With a sigh, he put away his things and got out of the bathtub.

“Go fuck yourself, Guin.” Lancelot raised his voice to make his non-insulting words heard. “Arthur? Please open the door—I promise to behave better. And really, isn’t it cramped and boring in there? You can’t possibly find it nicer inside than out.”

“You know, I can’t tell whether you’re a better slut or a better bitch,” Guinevere told him, acidic tone capable of etching designs into metal.

Now sitting on the edge of the tub, Arthur had to wonder whether it was really worth it to open the door. Worries about workload and old enemies aside, he wasn’t sure whether his patience had rebuilt enough to tolerate their sniping. It was a wonder they managed to get anything done. Actually, it was a wonder they had the energy to keep doing it after the…incident in the kitchen, since Arthur certainly didn’t.

“All right, now he’s sulking.” Rap. Tap rap rap. Alternating between knuckles and fingers, Lancelot tapped out the beat to a current pop song. Then he…was he scratching at the door? “ _Arthur_ , for God’s sake. At least say something so we know you’re not trying to drown yourself in the toilet.”

Guinevere’s tone wanted to reach out and roll Lancelot’s eyes. “Yes, insult him. Wonderful plan.”

On the other hand, if he stayed in here, they probably would go on indefinitely. Or they might kill—jump each other. Arthur fought down a flush and opened the door. “If you’re not going to tell me anything, I might as well—mmph!”

He seemed to make that sound a lot since he’d met them. At least he remembered to grab for the doorframe, so when Lancelot suddenly hung all his weight from Arthur’s mouth and shoulders, Arthur didn’t fall over. Saved his back and some of his dignity.

“Hey, you’re catching on.” Lancelot nuzzled his way up Arthur’s neck to thread his tongue into Arthur’s ear. Then his shoulders hunched and he stiffened, having been abruptly jostled against Arthur. “Guin, you cunt.”

“If you’re going to put your bloody arse there, you should expect that. Now get off the poor man so he can eat.” She administered another smack to said body part; this time, Lancelot defiantly purred and attempted to swing Arthur backwards onto the floor.

Since that would’ve cracked his head on the toilet, Arthur hastily stumbled back to stay upright. Then he force-marched himself and Lancelot out of the bathroom to where he had enough room to peel off the other man. “She has a point.”

“I had a better one.” What with the mussed hair and pouting lip, Lancelot looked—and acted—about ten years younger than his actual age.

Arthur started to reply, then decided against it. Words didn’t seem to have any effect on either of these two. Actions were slightly better, but they still were likely to get trampled underfoot. Silence, on the other hand, got on everyone’s nerves. Even Tristan’s eerie soundlessness occasionally grated, and Arthur was so used to it that he judged the other man’s health by how much sound he made.

It seemed to work here, for after receiving no response, Lancelot subsided to watch Arthur eat in a mixture of concern and caution. Guinevere spent the first few minutes glowering at Lancelot, but she soon saw the pointlessness of that and instead switched to studying Arthur. The combination of their two intense stares was slightly more effective than Arthur had expected; he found himself curling his foot around the chair leg more than once.

“How is it?” Guinevere finally asked.

“Wonderful.” She was quite beautiful when nothing more than simple pleasure was lighting her eyes, Arthur thought. And the compliment was genuine, though he wished he could devote all his attention to appreciating it.

Lancelot had cleaned his plate in about a third of the time it took Arthur to eat half of his, and now he was toying with his fork. He darted a look at Arthur, trying to say something with just that, then shook his head as if laughing at himself. His gaze next flicked to Guinevere, who looked over just in time to meet it; they were certainly in-tune with each other, even if they didn’t really get along. At least, not in the commonly understood meaning of that phrase.

“The raid was a success,” Guinevere suddenly muttered, sounding far from happy.

“Cerdic got away,” Lancelot said at the same time. Then they both looked up to check Arthur’s reaction.

Which at first didn’t exist, because Arthur was busy stilling into ice. He needed a moment to thaw himself, and then everything revived at once so he still couldn’t have a reaction. There was too much for him to sort through and decide on.

His face nonetheless must have been a fascinating sight, since neither Lancelot nor Guinevere would stop looking at him. On the contrary, they were leaning closer, and Guinevere put her hand on his arm. “They’re tracking him. He was wounded; they say they should have him by morning.”

“I hope so,” Arthur said at last. He put down his knife and fork and pushed back from the table, then slumped. Fortunately, his chair was broad and sturdy, so he wasn’t abruptly deposited on the floor.

Though it did creak quite a bit when Guinevere suddenly straddled him. “Can I make up for my colleagues’ incompetence?” she suggested, eyebrow and body provocatively arched.

Then she answered her own question, and _then_ Arthur wasn’t in a position to refute her.

* * *

If kissing in the dark was inconvenient, then sex in a backseat was just awkward, Gawain decided. Though the second one he wanted to do again despite the bruised knees and strained back. Tristan’s car was huge, so it wasn’t too bad. And it definitely wasn’t as creepy as the Attic had been. “You okay?”

“I’m fine.” Tristan swiped wet hair out of his face, then flopped his hand up to grab onto the top of the seat. He used that hold to pull himself up and slide off Gawain, which made the both of them stifle moans. Then he slouched in the corner of the seat, arms lightly draped over Gawain’s shoulder, and flashed a curve of white. “I might have to stop climbing trees for a day.”

“I might have to spend all of tomorrow lying on a couch to grade,” Gawain mumbled, rubbing at his back. Other fingers shoved his aside, and then he was going boneless on Tristan again, mindlessly mouthing at the man’s collarbone. “Christ, that’s good…you sure no condom’s okay?”

Soft snort. Because it was a stupid question at this point, and Gawain would’ve been horribly embarrassed about it if he hadn’t been so busy sucking on Tristan’s neck. “Are you expecting anyone else to join in?”

The funny thing about how Tristan talked, Gawain figured, was how the man referred to present and past and future as if they were the same thing, or if they were happening concurrently. Like now—when he said ‘anyone else,’ he seemed to mean if Gawain was seeing anyone else, if Gawain planned to, and if Gawain had traces of anyone else in his health.

Or maybe Gawain’s mind had just permanently broken down, and he was just making all that up. Still, he didn’t think he’d made up the slight waver he’d heard in Tristan’s voice.

“No.” He heaved himself up to kiss Tristan as close to senseless as he could. “Galahad worries me sometimes that way. God, it’s such a pain to drag him to the hospital for a _gunshot_ wound, let alone get him to a clinic. Jackass is lucky, but you wonder for how long.”

The hand massaging his back slowed, dragged fingertips so circles turned into flowing arabesques. “You almost sound like you’re brothers,” Tristan observed.

“Might as well be. He’s closer than—” Gawain stopped and cocked his head, then reached down to snag Tristan’s jeans. “Your pants are ringing.”

Tolerant humor was foremost in Tristan’s eyes as he dug out the shrilling object. He leaned back and let Gawain tuck into his shoulder, where they both could hear. “Arthur?”

*Tristan? Did—did you find the statuette?* Panting sounds. Clothes were being violently displaced, and at least one other person was near the phone on Arthur’s end of the line, since Gawain could hear soft wet noises. And Arthur was talking, so it wasn’t his mouth.

“Yes…” Tristan sat a little straighter, though Gawain couldn’t see any reason to be more alert. It sounded like Arthur was having fun, even if it was slightly against his will.

Somebody moaned and Arthur made an embarrassed exclamation. Quickly followed by a hitch in breath. *Oh, good. You aren’t near home or my office, are you? I just heard from Interpol—they’ve caught everyone except Cerdic.* Frantic whisper to someone to get their tongue out of there. *They say they’ll have him soon,* Arthur continued, voice much more hurried. *But still, till they do…*

“I’ll stay clear.” Somehow Tristan kept a straight face while he looked about; they were parked in the middle of a parking garage by the library, which was quite far from either of the two places Arthur had named. “Are you all right?” A wicked gleam came into Tristan’s eyes. “You sound short of breath.”

Arthur’s blush easily transmitted itself over the line. *I’m fine—fine! Perfectly fine. Have a good night, Tristan.*

“I was and keep planning to.” Tristan clicked off the cell, then looked at Gawain.

Damn. “But not in the way that means I get to see what makes you twitch, I take it.”

The other man shrugged, but it was plain he’d made up his mind and wasn’t going to change it. “A good night for me would also be seeing that Cerdic’s out of my life for good. And that Arthur stays all right. How many rifles do you have in the trunk?”

“I left those at home, but there are a few handguns. I’ll drive.” Gawain paused, then amended that. “Once I find my shoe. Did it go in the backseat, or the front?”

* * *

Arthur made a good pillow, even if Guin was taking up half his shoulder with her hand. Lancelot nudged it down with his chin and burrowed beneath the sheets till he was wrapped around Arthur’s back. Then he went to sleep.

According to the clock, only forty minutes had passed when Lancelot woke again, but a lot had changed. For one thing, he was cuddling Guin instead; he pried her nails out of his arm and sat up, looking around for Arthur.

For the second thing, there was a rather brisk draft, and Lancelot was almost positive all the windows had been shut. He quietly snagged his shirt from the floor and threw it on, though he didn’t bother to do up all the but—actually, it was Arthur’s shirt. When Lancelot eased out of bed, he found that the tails hung well down his thighs. And he was standing on a pair of pants that also turned out to be Arthur’s.

That meant Arthur still had to be around, since he wasn’t the type to go running about in his underwear. On the one hand, Lancelot was relieved because then he wouldn’t have to chase down the man and waste time smacking sense into him—which never seemed to stick in Arthur anyway.

On the other hand, the question then became where the fuck was Arthur? Because Lancelot was just about breaking his ears and he couldn’t hear a thing. Except for Guin sitting up behind him. He turned around and laid a finger against his lips, only to receive a glare for even thinking she needed a warning. She quickly slipped into a silk robe and got off the bed, gun in hand.

Oh, right. Lancelot reached beneath his pillow and behind the mattress…and found his gun gone.

Guin elbowed him so he’d look at her. ‘What?’ she mouthed.

‘He took mine,’ Lancelot mouthed back, thoroughly annoyed. It was one thing for Arthur to go wandering if he’d had a nightmare or something similar, but it was another to steal Lancelot’s semiautomatic. And not leave a note, so Arthur damn well better still be in the apartment.

Especially since Guin wasn’t bloody waiting for Lancelot to rustle up a spare, but instead was easing into the darkened living room. The corner of her robe softly whispered around the corner.

He gave up on the spare and followed her, planning on retrieving the one from the sofa. It being uptown New York, the room was neither fully quiet nor fully dark, but they were on a high enough floor so that the silence was still complete enough to get on Lancelot’s nerves. He squinted and peered around, looking for any unfamiliar silhouettes, but he didn’t see any. Good and bad—good because that meant he didn’t have to fight without trousers on, bad because then Arthur was walking around the building naked.

Lancelot flipped on the light and, ignoring Guin’s cursing, searched about till he found his pants. “You don’t think his mind snapped, did you?”

“What?” she growled, only now lowering her gun. Very funny, Guin.

“His clothes are still here. My gun’s missing, but…he has a very, very large briefcase,” Lancelot observed. He went over to it and poked about, then came up with a tie and a pair of socks. In addition to those, there was a laptop, several bulging files and enough space for a set of clothing, if it were rolled up tight and shoved down. “On second thought, maybe he doesn’t need his shirt.”

Guinevere didn’t seem to find that funny or helpful, to judge by the nasty Welsh she was muttering as she stomped over to the window. It was wide-open…Lancelot lunged and got his hands under the sill just as she slammed it down. He pushed back, barely kept his hands from being mashed, and for a long moment they were playing a confused game of opposites. Then Guin let go and stared at him while he jerked up the window. “What the hell are you doing?”

“I’m checking something.” He stuck his head out the window and scrutinized the side of the wall, looking for traces. “Did Arthur take his shoes?”

No answer from her.

“Guin. Did he take his shoes?” Lancelot impatiently repeated.

No answer. Well, he did get a reply by way of a strangled growling, but that didn’t qualify as an _answer_. It did, however, make the hairs on the back of his neck prickle and so when he turned around, he did so very, very slowly.

No, Arthur hadn’t taken his shoes. Or rather, he had, but they were now bloodstained and scuffed and dangling from the hands of a huge barrel-chested man whose right shoulder was swathed in red-spotted bandages. Though that didn’t make the Uzi he was pointing at them shake in the least.

Guin was shaking. She hadn’t gotten up her gun fast enough, and the man was gesturing for her to lower it, but her hands were shaking so hard that she wasn’t going very fast. Not from fear—she wanted to rip the man to pieces and it showed.

The sill creaked loudly and that was when Lancelot realized exactly how hard he was gripping it, as if he was trying to tear it apart. He slowly leaned back against the window. “So who the hell are you?”

“You never read the whole damn file, did you?” Guin hissed. “That’s Cerdic.”

The man nodded in acknowledgment, a faint, deceptively tired smile now playing over his face. “So it’s you two. I wondered when Arthur was going to stand and fight. It took him a while to work up the nerve.”

Obviously, he was baiting them. Less obviously, it was working. Lancelot had to kick Guin in the ankle to stop her from delivering a doubtless scathing yet hasty reply. “I’m wondering that it took you so long to find him. So what’s the plan, Cerdic? Kill two Interpol agents and give law enforcement everywhere an even better reason to hunt you to the ground?”

Cerdic dropped the shoes. They thudded off-rhythm to the pounding of Lancelot’s pulse and came to rest on their sides, empty holes facing him.

“Who says I’m going to kill you?” Cerdic retorted, hefting the Uzi. His injured arm _was_ beginning to fail him now and he had to brace the heavy weapon on his good one. “Arthur was known to be in here. And he’s done just as much as I have. You think six years of hiding have changed him any? Really?”

Guin started to tap the fingers of her left hand against the wall; Lancelot heard and prepared to dive in that direction.

“I’m glad to have seen your faces, though. I always wondered what he was looking for.” The Uzi rose.

And the door behind Cerdic slammed open.

* * *

Arthur was waiting on the front steps. Which was why Tristan had made Gawain park a block away and then had led them around the building, so they could knock out the two waiting in Cerdic’s car. He let Gawain take care of heaving the bodies in the trunk and went on ahead to deal with the more difficult part of the night.

“They were in the back, disguised as a cleaning truck.” Tristan slapped a gun in Arthur’s hand and jogged past him for the elevator. “What floor?”

“What—Cerdic’s _here_?” The other man whirled and was in the elevator two seconds before Tristan, punching at the buttons. He shoved the gun Tristan had given him into his trousers, then yanked it out plus one he’d already had tucked into his waistband. Arthur pulled up his sagging trousers, stare dark and hard and relentless on Tristan. “What are you doing here? Where’s Gawain and Galahad? Are they all right?”

He was wearing the spare shirt and pants Tristan had tossed into his bag. There were bite-marks of two sizes visible at the base of his neck, and the set of his shoulders was slowly shifting. When he stepped forward to grab Tristan’s shoulder, he didn’t make a sound.

“Galahad went home; he’s keeping the statuette. Gawain’s handling the drivers Cerdic picked up.” Tristan edged back so Arthur’s hand slid off. “You’ve already got a gun.”

Arthur blinked at him. Then the man looked down at both filled hands, as if he hadn’t even realized. He probably hadn’t. “Oh. It must be Lancelot’s or Guinevere’s…they keep theirs where I keep mine—what are you doing here?”

“If Cerdic got away, there was only one place he was going to go: where you were. You knew that, and that’s why you were down here to meet me. He ordered my mother’s death. If he’s finally being taken in, I want him to see my face and know why he’s going.” The numbers on the digital display were rapidly climbing, so Tristan spoke faster. He took his other hand out of his jacket so his gun hung loosely by his side, ready to be used if necessary. “What happened, happened. You can’t run from it. You can’t deny it. You face it and you use what you have to in order to end it.”

Air harshly hissed from Arthur’s mouth. He stared at Tristan for a long moment, two men eying each other…and then his lashes fluttered and when they went up again, he was himself. Both of himselves. “You’re quoting me again.”

“You think it’s pride to listen to yourself, so I don’t know how else you’d hear it.” When Arthur reached out this time, Tristan let the hand land on his shoulder. And he let it squeeze him, since unlike the first time, it was meant in gratitude and approval.

The elevator dinged and they both turned to raise their guns at the opening doors. Arthur spent the barest second like that before moving ahead. He was against the door of one apartment and listening intently, all while not having made a single sound.

For his part, Tristan took his time covering the rest of the hallway before he joined Arthur, and even then he let the other man take the lead. Yes, he did want Cerdic dead, but not in the way he’d had his mother’s actual killers. Whose faces he’d seen many times, because they’d babysat him and passed him candy and taught him the skills he was currently using. To him, they had been the more painful betrayers, because they’d known what they had been destroying. Cerdic, on the other hand, hadn’t worked closely with his mother and so when he’d given the order, he’d had no reason to care. So the grudge against him was mostly Arthur’s.

Suddenly Arthur’s face twisted around what he was hearing. He had had his right side pressed against the door, one hand on the knob; now he spun and rammed against the door with his left shoulder. The cracking of it flying open was explosive.

Shooting. Tristan automatically dropped to his belly. He was about to roll inside the apartment when a blurry mass flung out of it, and instead he scrambled backwards so he could get his gun up. By then, the mass had separated into Arthur and Cerdic, both panting hard and both with fresh bruises on their faces. Cerdic had a bandaged arm and the wraps had been mostly torn off, so Tristan could see a scabby, clotted dark red pit in the man’s shoulder. Arthur—was in the way. Cursing under his breath, Tristan lowered his gun.

Someone else came skidding out of the apartment, but they caught themselves on the doorframe—Lancelot. His face had no color in it and his eyes were brilliantly dark and huge, fixed squarely on Arthur. “You—the shoes were bloody—”

“He took them from my house.” Arthur didn’t bother looking over. He stepped forward and sideways; Cerdic did the same but in the opposite direction. Now Tristan could see that they had their guns trained on each other. “I should’ve done this a long time ago.”

“Same here.” Up and down the hall behind Cerdic, doors were opening. Scared faces would poke out and then quickly withdraw, while a low babble of phones and fear-pitched voices started up. Cerdic gave Arthur a brief smile. “Why were you waiting? Did you think you weren’t qualified to come after us?”

What appeared on Arthur’s face had the form of a smile, but none of its substance. It was more like a predator baring its teeth than anything else, and Tristan could see it making Lancelot take a step back in surprise. Beside him showed Guin’s profile, but she was watching Cerdic. With the occasional glance to Arthur, Tristan amended.

“Mostly,” was Arthur’s surprising admission. Even Cerdic showed shock—and Arthur took swift advantage of that by taking a long stride forward, guns raising to aim at the center of Cerdic’s forehead. “I thought I wouldn’t be able to keep it from changing me. But I have changed, so it’s a moot point. There’s no way out, Cerdic. Drop the gun.”

“Because of only you?” Though he remained calm, Cerdic’s eyes were twitching sideways. He was searching his peripheral vision.

Tristan thought it was about time to stand up, so he did. To make it easier for Cerdic, he lifted his gun as well. “Not quite.”

It took a moment for Cerdic to recognize him, and when that light did go on in his eyes, he took it with startling good grace. A shrug and a nod, and a good look at Tristan, as if there was a future where Cerdic would be able to use that memory. “I nearly killed them when I found out they didn’t get the son. Thought he’d cause problems.”

“Cerdic, either you’re walking out in handcuffs or you’re being carried out on a stretcher.” Arthur’s hands tightened on his guns. His face was deadly, but…controlled. If Tristan squinted, he could see the thoughts flying through Arthur’s mind, calculations and judgments for every change that the new second brought.

Guin was slowly walking out, also covering Cerdic. She wasn’t precisely blocking Tristan’s shot, but one step and she would be, so he moved across the hall to cover Arthur’s other side. In that position, he had a perfect view of the door right beside Cerdic opening.

“What’s going—oh, my God!” some woman shrieked.

And the tableau snapped, collapsed like so many beads of dew falling from a broken spiderweb. Cerdic lunged for the woman and Arthur was shooting before the man’s weight even finished shifting into a dive. Arthur threw himself sideways and slammed into Tristan because Cerdic was firing back, spraying the hallway with gunfire, and Tristan’s shot went awry into the ceiling. But he couldn’t be angry about that because Arthur had grunted, low and pained, and suddenly Tristan had his hands full heaving the other man around the corner.

Guin had fired as well. Once, before Lancelot had snatched her back from Cerdic’s shooting. They’d been falling into the apartment and were probably all right.

“Let go,” Arthur snarled, elbowing out of Tristan’s hold. He shoved off with a foot and rolled back, snapping off bullets.

Cerdic was still firing and for a moment Tristan nearly screamed at Arthur’s stupidity, but that wouldn’t have done anything so he didn’t. He picked up his gun and skidded back around the corner just in time for something to burn past his right side. Hand clapped to it, he let his sliding feet carry him into a fall against the opposite wall and prepared to shoot—

\--except Cerdic’s eyes were rolling back to the whites, and the thin trickle of blood from his mouth was dwarfed by the flood from his ruined neck. He was slumped halfway across the hallway, while inside the apartment nearest him, the woman kept screaming.

Tristan lowered his gun and looked at the palm he’d slapped against his side—trace blood, so probably a graze. Then he turned towards Arthur.

Or where Arthur should’ve been, if he hadn’t been limping over to check Cerdic for any remaining signs of life. He had red splotches spreading in one sleeve and down the side of one leg, but he wasn’t paling so he didn’t have any serious injuries. “Damn. I wish I hadn’t had to…”

“I’m bloody fucking glad you did,” Lancelot harshly told him. The other man was by Arthur’s side and patting him down for injuries before Arthur had even finished standing. Then he hid his face in Arthur’s chest while his hands went around Arthur to clutch in his shirt.

After a moment, Arthur lifted his hand and briefly stroked Lancelot’s hair. Guin stepped out, phone to ear to receive her rapidfire orders. She looked as if she wanted to collapse, too, but she made a visible effort to keep herself up.

Arthur let go of Lancelot and eased back to look down the hallway. “Anyone hurt?” he called.

“You, if you ever pull that again.” Both Guinevere and Lancelot glared at him. Then Lancelot stalked down the hall, doing his best to charm the others into calming down, while Guinevere hung back to lean against Arthur’s side.

“That was rude, too. Leaving without even writing a note.” She paused in her stream of orders to lay her forehead on Arthur’s shoulder. Then she snorted at herself. Looked up at Arthur with a tired, strained, but definitely teasing smile. “Maybe you’ve changed, but I think it’s for the better. It certainly looks good.”

For some reason, Arthur suddenly was terrified and trying to slide away from Guinevere. “You are _not_ going to—to--pounce--not here!” he hissed.

“No, first we get you stitches,” she placidly replied. After juggling the cell for a moment, she trapped it between ear and shoulder so she could rip up Arthur’s sleeve and bandage his arm. That made her robe gap open, which prompted Arthur to hastily pull her closer in order to block view of her breasts. “And get rid of the body. And buy you some more clothes, since all yours keep getting ruined.”

Arthur blushed and stuttered. Guinevere just looked coyly amused.

Tristan decided he’d better get back to Gawain and take care of those bodies. Everything seemed to be well in hand here.

* * *

“Can you believe it? A few dozen bulletholes, a minor police investigation that didn’t even take very long since the circumstances were so clear-cut, and we’re kicked out. Lease terminated.” Guinevere plopped the sack of vegetables besides her feet, then opened Arthur’s fridge.

Space. Lots of space. Some milk, a row of neatly regimented condiments that included a broad spectrum of ethnic cuisines, and in the drawers, just enough meat and other food for about one day of good meals. Or three days of skimpy ones, she decided after adjusting for non-Lancelot appetite and only one person. It was amazing Arthur was as tall and well-built as he was, given what he appeared to live on.

She rummaged around, tossed a few expired cuts of beef to Lancelot—he yowled at the first one, but didn’t at the other two so she assumed he’d caught them—and then began filling up. The one detail of which she approved was the organization; when things were properly placed, more could be crammed into a given space.

“Anyway, the rents in Manhattan are hell to keep up with,” Lancelot added. He squeezed by her with an armful of bagged suits. “So you don’t mind, right? We figured you had less bulletholes than we did.”

“They’re all patched, actually…” Arthur sounded bemused. He was still standing in the frame of the backdoor, though it’d been five minutes since he’d let them in.

Then Lancelot knocked a painting on the wall and Arthur transformed into the essence of speed, zipping over and straightening it in the blink of an eye. Lancelot’s footsteps stopped and the plastic bags made even more crumpling noises, which didn’t quite mask the wet tongue-twining sounds. Someone’s shoulder hit the wall—Arthur’s, since a pained hiss followed and he was the one with half-healed injuries. Nothing but solicitous, Lancelot murmured little apologies in between more frantic mouth-mashing.

Guinevere finished with the vegetables and turned to get the meat, kicking out as she did. She thought Lancelot had a very attractive yelp, and it should be heard as often as possible.

“Bitch.” To Arthur, he was practically cooing. “So where’s the bedroom?”

“Upstairs and to the…that’s the guest bedroom. Ah. Did you—were you expecting—” And Arthur went from bemusement into unvarnished confusion.

Lancelot engineered one last, gratuitous mouth-smacking. “Never mind. Upstairs, and I’ll figure out the rest myself. Oh, and thank you.”

“You’re…welcome.” From the way Arthur said that, Guinevere had the impression he was standing in place, blinking owlishly at the world. She resisted the urge to turn around and pull him down; the meat would spoil before they got up again.

When she’d almost finished putting away the meat, Arthur finally shook himself out of it. He began to say something that sounded conversational, but another knock interrupted him. As he walked over to answer the door, Guinevere casually closed the fridge and stood up to take out the non-perishable goods from her last two bags. She did so as slow as possible, just in case the conversation dragged out.

At the door was a weathered, aged man with a full beard and a tall walking stick. He still cut a fine figure, and in his prime must have been the most impressive man in town. Curiously enough, Guinevere couldn’t immediately guess what profession he followed, when usually she needed no more than a glance.

“Merlin.” Arthur sounded surprised…and a bit cautious. He started to open the door, graciously waving in the other man, but was refused. Nodding, Arthur leaned against the frame; he seemed to have expected that reaction. Frequent visitor, then.

“Arthur. I see you’re not nearly as ill as the rumors have it. That’s good.” Merlin folded his hands around his stick and rested his head against it, watching Arthur with a detached, intense gaze. But a little fond as well, Guinevere thought.

On the other hand, Arthur seemed to be nothing but tension. His voice went a little lower and gained a trace of pleading. “I plan to be back to working full-time Monday. Once again, I’d like to apologize for all the trouble I’ve put you and the college through. I never intended to, and if I could’ve avoided it, I would have.”

“Of that I’m sure. You haven’t taken a vacation since you joined the faculty, so I have no problem with you taking half a week off.” Pause, and then Merlin went on, also in a lower tone. “The notice was late, but emergencies happen. What I am concerned about, however, is the circumstances of your particular emergency. Avalon College has always prided itself on the exclusion of violence from its grounds.”

Guinevere set down the can in her hand and forgot about reaching for the next one because she was watching Arthur so closely.

He absorbed the other man’s words in relative calm, and then he took his time formulating an answer. But when he did reply, he didn’t waver in the least on any point. “So have I. And I will always try to uproot violence wherever it begins to grow. But—some growths need more force to remove than others.” Arthur pushed off the frame and stood straight, blocking Guinevere’s view of Merlin. “My emergency was a one-in-a-lifetime matter, and I can assure you that its like won’t happen again. I can also tell you that I will do everything in my power to keep any future disturbances in my private life off-campus.”

As quietly as she could, Guinevere scooted over so she could see Merlin’s face. Her heel clattered once and she winced, but the other two didn’t seem to notice.

“I think,” Merlin slowly said, “That is all anyone can expect from anyone else. You are an excellent professor and an inspiring teacher, Arthur. I wish you the best of luck in protecting that.”

He raised his stick in some arcane salute, to which a startled Arthur hastily nodded, and then turned to trip quickly down the steps. Guinevere rounded the island and came up to Arthur’s side, wrapping his hand in hers. “Who was that?”

“The…the dean of the college.” Now that the potential threat was gone, Arthur was shakily coming down. It seemed as if he’d never quite learned how to deal with the absence of pressure, and so had to figure out anew how to relax every time. “I was almost certain he was going to fire me…”

“You really do like teaching.” She rubbed at his hand till the fingers curled to squeeze around hers. 

After another moment of staring, Arthur backed up and closed the door. Then he leaned down to hesitantly peck at her temple. “Yes. You don’t find that boring, do you?”

“Honestly? I find it mostly irritating. But I don’t find you boring, so stop worrying.” She wrapped her arm around his neck and dragged him down for a proper kiss.


	6. Epilogue: Closing Comments

“Look at them. They’re all so hopeful.” With one sweep of the hand, Galahad jumbled together men and women, freshmen and seniors, ethnicities from all corners of the earth and reduced them to one common denominator. He shot a teasing look at Gawain. “Think we should mention Professor Pendragon is now off the lists?”

Unfortunately, in this case Gawain couldn’t argue with Galahad’s simplification. But he could slap the man upside the head. “Do that and we’ll probably be lynched.”

“And I thought you getting a new boyfriend was going to improve your temper.” Galahad hit Gawain on the arm and then took up his characteristic slouch. He flopped up a dog-eared pad of paper covered with doodles and the occasional actual _note_ , as if he really meant to be prepared for his discussion section this time. A more likely scenario was him sneaking Gawain’s notes and then improvising the rest.

Luckily for his students, Galahad had enough of an intuitive grasp on philosophy that he could fake his way through a lot. But once in a while he tripped up, and then all hell broke loose.

“Contrary to popular belief, sex is not a universal cure.” Though Gawain couldn’t help grinning. He got out his own pad of paper and scribbled a quick reminder to check the rattraps in the basement of their apartment building before he went to see Tristan. The hawk seemed to like those pretty well. “Someday you’re going to realize that, and you’re going to want more than that pair of D-cups you’re staring at.”

“Maybe, but they’re damn perky.” Galahad didn’t change the direction of his gaze. “So that’s what happens to you—you go all philosophical on me. It’s our major, not our life.”

Gawain tried not to be embarrassed; after all, he wasn’t the one being a dick. It really was a shame women never seemed to see Galahad’s good qualities, other than the one between his legs. “I’m staying at Tristan’s tonight, so use the damned bed, all right? I don’t want to accidentally step in another wet spot.”

“Sure, sure—hey, you put away the rifle, right? The last one picked up one of our clips and freaked out. I had to tell her it was just a really weird-looking ink cartridge for the printer.” At least Galahad had stopped leaning way over to get a better view. He finally had his fill of the redhead and…started eying a brunette instead.

“Yes, I put it away. And I think now I’d just be happy if you upgraded the kind of girls you date,” Gawain muttered, covering his face with his hand. Then Arthur walked in and he had to sit up, else be swamped in the waves of lust suddenly vibrating from the audience.

* * *

Lancelot sat down and pressed his glass of ice-water to the side of his head. Backlogs were such a bitch. Sometimes he wished humanity had never invented paper, or had just skipped from it straight to the electronic-communications stage, where he could skim forms and bug Arthur via email at the same time. It was fun to guess how long the next lag-time would be, since those were directly proportional to the degree of Arthur’s embarrassment. And when he got home, Arthur was usually hacked off and that always led to good sex right on the floor.

He and Guin had never gotten around to finding another apartment, though they were technically still looking. Apparently the leasing agents had a network just like casinos did, and they’d blacklisted Lancelot and Guinevere. It was still possible to get an apartment, but either they had to downgrade their location or they had to pay through the nose for it. Which wasn’t to their tastes.

Anyway, if they moved out of Arthur’s house, he’d suddenly have a skeleton for a home again. Half the furniture would be gone, nearly all the food in the fridge…and two-thirds of the warmth in the bed.

“Stop it. Work.” Before memories of last night could come flooding in, Lancelot chopped down a barrier and resolutely attacked the pile of forms.

He got through three before he had to stick the glass against his temple again. By then, all the ice had melted and it didn’t do much good. He tried getting through more by sheer force of will, but it was very clear very soon that he didn’t have Arthur’s tolerance for paper-drudgery. Somehow the other man had trained himself to actually _like_ it. Or maybe it was just an extension of his belief that out there was a golden ideal that made all the bad grammar, gushy style and incomprehensible arguments worth reading a thousand papers a year.

Either way, it wasn’t a trick Lancelot could copy. So he got up, dumped out his glass in the office plant, and refilled it with nothing but ice cubes. Then he reseated himself at his desk and glared at the forms.

They didn’t disappear.

Lancelot looked across at Guin’s office, which had the lights off and the door shut. It was only mid-afternoon. “God, how the hell does she do that?”

And he’d just prolonged his torture by another two seconds. With a sigh, he turned back to his desk and picked up his pen. What he did so he could go home and get Arthur sprawling on the floor…

* * *

“Nice,” Bors said, staring up at the top of the aviary. Above him and Tristan, the peregrine falcon gracefully swooped from one end to the other, then back again. Itching to go out again. “Looks like you did a good job putting her back together.”

“Thanks.” Tristan shaded his eyes and critically examined the way the falcon was maneuvering—yes, the broken wing almost back to normal. Time to get her ready for re-release.

There were real trees growing in the aviary and they needed pruning every couple of months, which was what Bors had been doing with Tristan. Now he shouldered the cut branches and clapped Tristan on the shoulder, heading past him for the door. “Gotta go mulch these; my girl’s growing pea plants for her science fair and she’ll be needing it. See you ‘round.”

Raising a hand in acknowledgment, Tristan continued to watch the falcon for a few more minutes. Then he also left to visit his lady for the day.

She swooped down to his arm the moment he walked in and made pointed inquiring sounds; he ran a finger over the top of her head in apology. “I’m late. But Gawain’s coming over and I needed to get the dead birds out of the freezer. And find a chair with legs that don’t have squirrel teeth-marks.”

When he mentioned Gawain’s name, she perked up. Tristan grinned. “He’ll probably bring you something tasty that’s a better apology.”

* * *

“Thank you so much, Dag,” floated Kitty’s voice. Then she and Vanora were hustling themselves to catch Arthur right at the door, faces flushed and smiles sparkling-wide.

Arthur firmly reminded himself that there was no reason yet to be suspicious, and therefore he wasn’t justified in backing right back out. He re-hefted his briefcase and continued walking down the hall. “Hello, ladies. You’re both looking quite wonderful.”

“Brilliant lecture as usual, Arthur.” Kitty seized light but unbreakable hold of his arm and gave him her most charming smile. “So, I hear your household has expanded.”

On his other side, Vanora refrained from actually hooking onto him, but her gaze did the job just as well. It didn’t qualify as reasonable grounds for suspicion, but it certainly was inclining Arthur towards it. He kept his expression as bland as possible and surreptitiously judged the remaining distance to his office. Too far. And Kitty’s skirt was getting tangled in her feet at their current pace, so rushing wasn’t an option. Damn. “Really?”

“Oh, don’t play coy.” Vanora gave him a playful smack on the arm. “You and Mr. DuLac and Ms. DeGrance. I’ve seen them dropping you off in the mornings. And you’ve got hickeys.”

_Damn_. Cheeks burning, Arthur grabbed at his throat. Then he yanked at his collar, and kept doing so till Kitty pulled down his hand.

“You’ve done a commendable job of hiding them. If we weren’t looking, we wouldn’t have seen them,” she scolded. Then she smiled again, and this time the steel came out. “Now, do _tell_ , Arthur.”

At the same time, Vanora swerved in front of him and barred the door to his office. She even braced her feet and elbows in the corners, and, having met her children, Arthur was sure she had more experience than he did on being an immovable object. He stopped and considered his options.

“You’re more relaxed. I bet they’re absolutely wonderful in bed.” For a professor with tenure, Kitty did a remarkable impression of a cat with cream in its mouth. It was a test of will for Arthur to keep from choking, and then to not flinch as she leaned in. Her voice theatrically dropped in volume. “Come on, Pendragon. Give us the goods. We’re friends; we want to know you’re all right. How are they?”

“Well…” He debated a little longer, then just decided to say what had first sprung to mind. He’d known Kitty and Vanora since he’d arrived at Avalon, and they deserved honesty from him, if anyone did. Besides, he was a little bit irked with having to constantly readjust his collar all day. “It’s like having a pair of obnoxious, human-size cats. They come and go when they please, squabble like mad with each other over everything, maul my clothes, and whine incessantly whenever I shut them out to get some work done.”

Vanora broke into a knowing grin, while Kitty snorted and looked down. She took the hand Arthur was using to carry his briefcase and tugged it up so she could pick out a little slip of paper that hadn’t quite made it in when he’d shut it. A quick glance, and then she was also smiling. “Which is why you’ve just bought an espresso machine, even though you’re a devout tea fanatic?”

Arthur reluctantly surrendered to the urge to smile as well, though he suspected his was more than a bit foolish-looking. He took the receipt back from Kitty and opened his briefcase just enough to drop it in. “Satisfied?”

“Oh, very.” When she beamed like that, Kitty not only looked years younger, but she almost passed for innocent as well. “My five-dollar-bill is safe and sound. But don’t worry, we won’t say anything other than that you’re off the market.”

Then she and Vanora went off, giggling and whispering to each other while Arthur belatedly had an attack of panic. That pair, however, was too fast and were gone before he could call back to them. Burying himself in work sounded like heaven at the moment, so he opened the door and went into his office.

He had just put down his briefcase when someone shut the door. There was an emerald blur and then he was pinned against the desk with Guinevere wrapping his tie around her hand. “Kitty is very, very insulted,” she purred. “Though she might forgive you if you make her scream before Lancelot manages to get out of work.”

Arthur shouldn’t have bothered trying to answer, since he knew it’d just be swallowed by her mouth. He did anyway—it was the principle of the thing. And principle fulfilled, he let her drag him to the floor.


End file.
